The Coffee Valley Railroad: How I Made My Asphalt Roads

Since construction on the CVRR began one task that ate at me was, "How am I going to make my roads?" And as construction when on, from time to time, I would do some light research into the options. I found many methods to choose from but nothing set right with me for what I wanted to do. In their own rights they were all good but I just never had that feels-good-in-my-gut feeling until one day a saw a single image in Google Images where a guy had used the back side of a roofing shingle as the asphalt road on his HO Scale layout. It jumped off of the screen and hit me in the face - "That's it!!!" The texture was what I wanted...its installation on vertical changes was of no consequence...and I had some old unused shingles out in the shed...PERFECT!!!

I do not have that image's URL or the person's name but I still give credit for the idea to that individual who posted the picture.

Here is my story on how I made my asphalt roads. This blog entry is more of a pictorial How-To than an editorial but I will provide word descriptions where it makes sense.

Now don't get all excited and go climbing up on your roof to get a shingle - that would be bad. Instead wait until your neighbor goes to work and then sneak around back...

On the CVRR the road is not completely flat. There are a few minor ups-and-downs as the road meets the train tracks and there is one large hill as the road goes under the train bridge. Roofing shingles are flexible and the cut pieces conformed wonderfully to these vertical transitions so really all I had to do was start cutting the shingles.

Well, as much as I wanted to I could not start cutting shingles right away - I needed some templates first. Using graph paper I began cutting and taping. The process is quite simple - make the paper be what you want the road to be, place the paper on the backside of the shingle (for my roads the back side of the shingle was the top side of the road), trace the pattern onto the shingle, get a X-Acto knife and make a few light cuts and then break the rest of it apart (as if you were scoring and snapping styrene plastic).

In then picture below I have already cut my first shingle piece and have moved onto making other templates.

The next several pictures show the progress as I continue 'laying asphalt'.

We have reached the part where the road goes under the bridge. This piece utilized a single shingle due to the odd shape. If memory serves I used 3, maybe 4, shingles for this project.

Now here is a series of pictures showing how I cut the last road piece. As I mentioned above trace the template shape onto the back of the shingle, score the line with a knife (2 or 3 passes worked for me), then snap it off.

The edges were a little rough. Because I was going to be joining pieces together I wanted the joints to be as invisible as possible so I used a file to gently even up the edges.

More progress pictures...

Earlier I mentioned that I used 3 or 4 shingles for my roads. That does seem excessive but remember that shingles have grooves cut into them and this limits the size/number of pieces you can get out of a single shingle. Below is a picture of a shingle after I cut a large section of road. You can see how there is not much left for anything except small sections.

OK, I now have all of the roads pieces cut and shaped. Now it is time to paint. Resist the urge to paint the roads a dark gray. The only dark gray roads are those which are brand new. Give them about a year and the color fades to a light gray. Below I have them laid out and ready for paint. The small painted piece in the bottom center was my test piece which I used to test my paint colors on.

I also used the test piece to try my hand at dry brushing oil trails and small sealant tracks.

I mixed together Gray Sky and Black until I got the color I wanted. The Gray Sky was just too light for what I wanted so a little Black toned it down.

After those dried I decided to go ahead and cut the piece for a parking lot.

Time to paint some lines.

To do this I taped off everything except where the line would be. The surface of the shingle is a little rough so be sure you press the tape down really really good.

For reasons that I do not quite recall I used masking tape for the line definitions and clear tape for everything else.

I happen to have had a small can of yellow Testors spray paint nearby. This next part is important so PAY ATTENTION - I sprayed light coats into the air above the piece and let the paint fall onto the piece. I DID NOT spray it directly NOR did I do a lot at a time. Why am I being so clear with those statements? Because if I had sprayed too much the paint would have run under the tape. Remember I said that the surface of the shingle is rough? Well, there are little grooves and those little grooves go under the tape and the paint will, if to much is applied, run under the tape and look terrible. I did a trial run on my test piece and discovered this (I am so glad I tried it on a test piece first!!!). So, again, very light coats - letting the paint dry in between sprayings - and spray up into the air above the piece letting the paint fall onto the piece.

I should not have used clear tape to mask off the piece. If I had used masking tape then I would probably not have missed the 2 spots shown in the next picture. No problem...I still had some gray paint saved. A little touch-up painting and things were good.

Then I did a couple of white 'stop here' lines.

So far my paint job looked nice and clean. Time to dirty it up. Using the black paint I dry brushed those oil lines you see in the center of the lanes. I also made a fine point on a stick and drew some lines which represented filled-in-cracks and some random patch jobs. Then I gave it a light wash of an India Ink and isopropyl alcohol mixture.

In the following 2 pictures you can see the difference the made by the India Ink and isopropyl alcohol mixture (the "Inked" piece is on the left).

I have done all I can do with the pieces not attached and now it is time to put them in place. For this I felt that caulk would work well to hold them (I cannot recall why I didn't use regular glue but I am sure it was a good reason :D ).

Here is my 'spray paint booth'. Yea, go ahead and laugh but it worked. Anyway, this picture shows my parking lot piece waiting to get its spray of the India Ink and isopropyl alcohol mixture.

Time to fill in the joints. To do so I grabbed a tube of wood putty and some small pointed tools. I tried to cram the putty into the joint without getting to much on the surface of the shingle...er, uh...road. I used wood putty because I felt it could be worked well after it dried but, more importantly, not be messy when applying it like drywall mud could be. My hunch was right and it worked pretty good...enough so that I would use it again for the same task.

The following picture shows what I had after I had worked things smooth and before painting it.

I cannot say that I was very happy with the outcome of that job. I knew I would have to do better on the other ones and I did on the next one shown below.