Repaving Old Roads (28mm)

I made some paved 28mm road sections a few years back using 1" thick blue foam for use in contemporary, near future and sci-fi adventures.  I was in a hurry at the time to get them done, and the road surfaces were just painted foam, while the rest of the tiles were flocked.  This was my first experience using 1/43 die-cast vehicles, and I quickly found that the die-casts could beat up the foam roads.

I had long ago decided to re-surface the roads to make them more durable, but the stack of terrain tiles sat around for a few years waiting to be attended to.  Over the last few weeks, I finally got around  to repaving the roads, gluing a coat of fine ballast to the road surface with artists acrylic matte medium, and then coating with a couple of coats of acrylic paste, before painting. 

I should have used a finer sand, but have been trying to use up old supplies that are taking up valuable space, plus the price was right.  The result was a rather coarse, but tough road surface representing asphalt.  The stripes were added with fine acrylic paint pens with the aid of straight edges and plastic templates made from sheet styrene.

 

 

The tiles are generally for use as country roads in the western US. I need to add a few tiles with driveways for businesses and homes, as well as a few tiles for a town, then I can get around to some alien invasions, zombie outbreaks and whatnot.

The travel lanes are 2.25 inches wide between the center and edge lines, with a quarter to 3/8 inch shoulder.  The dashed lines are 2" long with 4" spaces between.  The dashes didn't scale right around the turns, so I gave them a double yellow "no passing zone".

The school bus is 1/50 scale, and the Isuzu Amigo is 1/43.  The lanes get a little narrow with larger 1/43 scale vehicles, but I'm okay with it.