Getting to roads and such what do you do

[who_dat73]

Hey every body I am thinking about starting on roads and parking lots on my N scale layout. My base is pretty flat as it is set in the midwest kinda a small rural town just barely hanging on so I am thinking gravel roads would be in order only problem is I have already layed WS vinel grass mat over most of it and started thinking about ditches and stuff.
My main industry that is surved in town is a Walthers Cornerstone grain elevator and storage shed I was thinking about using sheet cork under this to raise the groud level and and cork road bed with the sloped sides to look like a ditch but not sure if thats the way I want to go looking to my fellow Gaugers for some pointers on how to make this look right. If you need pictures of what I have I can get some out in a few days just let me know in the meen time any ideas?

Thanks in advance
Mike

 

[Jim Krause]

Do you plan to have a siding serving the grain elevavator? You could do a siding without the roadbed. This would be easier than raising the elevator. Also you could go to smaller rail on the siding, which is more prototypical. If you notice, most sidings are lower than the mainline. You can also add some profile to your layout by using small humps made of insulation foam. Make it appear that the right-of-way was cut through some uneven ground.

 

[Herc Driver]

Mike - you've got exactly my problem. I too laid a grass sheet over a smooth door and therefore had no terrain changes to speak of. To combat this, I added hills of various sizes using foam insulation and added the edge of a lake with an insulation embankment "holding" back the water which gives a slight illusion of the train tracks being "lower" than ground level. Check out some of the pictures on my gallery section (see link below) for how I worked around this problem. I'm certainly not saying what I did was perfect, but it was how things started when I first began the layout with my kids, so now I've got to deal with it the way it is or rip track up and create a 1% grades with foam insulation under the track to vary the terrain surface features. Sorry, this is long winded...just check out the pictures and see if you can use any of the ideas.

 

[who_dat73]

Sorry I didnt reply right away power supply went down and had to borrow a friends puter.
I am adding hills and stuff with no problem I am just thinking should I use road bed under my gravle to give the Roads some height but doing that I would have to raise the grain elevator up to the same height.
I do have a siding for the grain elevator and also have another next to it for the storage shed and for holding the cars that still need to be loaded and I also took your advice and toar out the old road bed so I could lower the sidings sice I have plans for magn. coupling after I get all the teraine done so I can just spot and let the roll into place.

 

[Badyin Macfadyi]

there's a company in the UK www.scalescenes.com provides a number of concrete and asphalt roads, including parking lots. Available in both N and HO
You pay with Paypal then get a code to download the various drawings from which you can print off as many copies as you want.