Roads

cabin4clw · Post by **cabin4clw** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:44 am

Hello,

I searched the site and couldn't find anything about the building of roads.

I have a olive green cloth that I use for my table. I've tried felt roads but to me they don't look good enough.

Can anyone suggest something that I can use for my roads for WW2 NWE and WW2 EF?

Any help would be great.

Joe

Cav Dog · Post by **Cav Dog** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 4:47 am

Here are three alternatives that are fairly common. There are other methods and it depends on the amount of work you want to do:

1. Buy some pastel chalks in the appropriate colors and draw the roads with them on your cloth. You can get good results by mixing browns, tans, yellows and a touch of white for dirt roads. Paved you would use more grays, browns and black. Inexpensive and can be washed off, but not the most durable.

2. Tape down a piece of wax paper as long as want your road. Lay parallel strips of masking tape on the wax paper as far apart as you want your roads to be wide. Get some paintable latex caulk and lay a bead down between the masking tape strips. Smooth it out with with a spatula or putty knife. Lat it set up for about 30 minutes or so but don't let it dry completely. Carefully pull up the masking tape from both sides and let it dry completely. Trim the remaining wax paper from the sides of the roads and then paint the road the appropriate colors. If you are feeling really ambitious, lay the tape a little wider than you want the road to be and finish the shoulders with paint, flock and foilage. Another alternative is to model ruts and wheel tracks while it is still pliable. Still relatively cheap but time consuming and curves can be difficult. Also can curl up on the edges and form wrinkles if you aren't careful pulling up the tape.

3. Buy pre-molded roads from any number of latex or resin casters. These can be expensive, especially if you buy them painted but they are very durable. You are limited to only a few shapes, but there seem to be enough for most networks you would want to build.

Good luck and please post us pictures of what you end up doing.

microgeorge · Post by **microgeorge** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 5:24 am

Try model railroad cork roadbeds. You can either spray paint them with a flat paint or, to get a cooler effect, spray them with some fleckstone that you can buy at any home improvement store or Hobby Lobby. You then trim them to the desired length with a pair of heavy scissors or X-acto knife.

Gompel · Post by **Gompel** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 3:28 pm

If you use cloth for other terrain features too, roads made out of cloth might fit in well and are easy to make. I use pencils to colour the roads.

Check my website for more tips&tricks for cloth based terrain.

BattlerBritain · Post by **BattlerBritain** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 6:31 pm

Have you got access to a good colour printer?

If so you can trawl the web and get screenshots/copies of realistic looking roads and road signs and copy+paste them into a word doc and print. Then just cut out and glue to either plastic card or normal card. A few prints and you've got enough to a small town easily.

I found a good set of snapshots from a railway modelling site that also included graffitti and advertising signs for modern urban settings.

There was also a discussion on this ages back and some examples of realistic looking roads posted. Try a search and see what comes up.

dougeagle · Post by **dougeagle** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 7:31 pm

cabin4clw wrote:Hello,

I searched the site and couldn't find anything about the building of roads.

I have a olive green cloth that I use for my table. I've tried felt roads but to me they don't look good enough.

Can anyone suggest something that I can use for my roads for WW2 NWE and WW2 EF?

Any help would be great.

Joe

Hey Joe (sounds like a Jimmy Hendrix song

)

I too have been on the search for a good road system and found that felt works, but not quite either. I was at Home Depot looking for something other than gaming and I found this [link deleted per forum rules]

Its a rubber style base board for offices and work shops. I cut mine to 1 inch and it bends over hills and when done, let it lay flat and it straightens out again. Just a thought of coarse. Oh the one I got is the 4" wide...but it wasn't sold as a full roll, it was something like $0.99 per foot.

BattlerBritain · Post by **BattlerBritain** » Tue Nov 01, 2011 7:45 pm

A link to a previous discussion on these forums showing what can be achieved with a bit of cutting+pasting:
http://www.ghqmodels.com/forum/viewtopi ... duni#29336

Scroll down a bit to see what others have done with such roads.

opsctr · Post by **opsctr** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:36 am

I don't know if you can still get roadtape in "Z" scale from Walthers but I will check my catalogue to see if it's still available and post an update later...

Sticking the tape to very thin plastic card makes fantastic "finished" two lane roads or in the picture above it has been used over thin plastic that has been glued to the foam hex bases we use for training purposes.

Also in the picture above you can see the dark version, the light version, and the cobblestone versions of the product.

In this picture you can see that it comes prepainted with center and edge lines for added realism, ...and less work on your part. Will

opsctr · Post by **opsctr** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:37 am

duplicate... sorry but the system is really slow right now it seems. Will

opsctr · Post by **opsctr** » Wed Nov 02, 2011 7:37 am

...did it again. Sorry, Will

opsctr · Post by **opsctr** » Thu Nov 03, 2011 2:24 am

Here is something that might help: [deleted - Cama]

And something else: [deleted - Cama]

Here is a sample of the "Z" scale roads: [deleted - Cama] I believe there is a US supplier.

This might not escape being censored but since GHQ doesn't have anything close let's hope not. Will

- per forum rules, links were deleted. The companies were Walthers and Noch; they should be easy to google and find. I have used Noch, and really like their stuff. Cama, out!

8ball · Post by **8ball** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 8:46 am

Check out the Road Packs on my site.

BattlerBritain · Post by **BattlerBritain** » Wed Dec 07, 2011 3:47 pm

8ball - nice set of roads. And buildings next to them.

Where'd you get the buildings from?

Mk 1 · Post by **Mk 1** » Fri Dec 09, 2011 4:34 am

Gompel wrote:If you use cloth for other terrain features too, roads made out of cloth might fit in well and are easy to make.

I found a black cloth tape at my local hardware store. Seemed to look OK for a road, and was easy as could be to use.

In the days when I used tape for roads, it made a nice and clear distinction between a paved road and a dirt road (represented by the ever-useful masking tape):

But now I am fully converted to using pastels to draw the roads on my battle maps. Takes a bit longer, but I am quite pleased by the results I get.

BattlerBritain · Post by **BattlerBritain** » Fri Dec 09, 2011 3:58 pm

MK1 - you've been taking terrain construction lessons from mluther haven't you?

Looks good though. Nice hills. I may have to try this myself.

Cheers,

B

Roads

Roads

Re: Roads