Flexible Dirt Roads made of Felt

There's been a bit of a delay in photography and hence blog posting, owing to the monstrous heat here in recent times. Now that we are back to proper British summer weather, real rain and decent cloud cover, I can get on with those tasks that require both hot lighting and constant jigging about the place. As my last-but-one post on flexible tarmac roads sparked some interest, I thought I'd show you the unmetalled roads, "dirt roads" as the Americans say, which I made last year. 

The era of battlefields covered in such roads lasted well into World War Two, at least outside western Europe, but in terms of wargames terrain I hadn't previously bothered with them, on the basis of being sceptical about any significant impact on battlefield movement speeds. Let's face it, they were rutted earth at best and deep mud at worst, so no easier for marching troops than the adjacent open fields of grass or crops. At a strategic or (ahem) operational level they did help because they led you roughly from one identifiable place to the next and they would pass through, around or over the obstacles you might find if you tried to go directly across country. But we found ourselves playing the Franco-Prussian War, where the battlefields were covered in roads and in the rules we were then using they had an impact. After one or two hopeless attempts to "suggest" the edges of roads with rocks and bushes, I thought it was time to try the approach that had worked for tarmac roads a few years earlier. 

A good look at battlefield maps suggested something like forty-five feet of road would do the job, together with a smaller amount of cobbled roads, which I'll discuss another time. About half the total length comprised 12" sections, a quarter was shorter pieces (8", 6", 4" and 2"), the remainder being junctions and curves of various radii. 

So these were strips of felt, broadly as described before. I decided on a width of some 48mm in all: just enough for the bases of most of our troops to march along them, without the board being covered in road. The edges of each section were cut in irregular waves, and I went so far as to chamfer the thickness of the felt at along the edges, using my scalpel in a diagonal chopping motion. This probably didn't make much difference to the final appearance, so feel free to omit it!

Unlike the tarmac roads, earthen ones obviously called for plenty of texture and at least a suggestion of ruts. After experimentation, I decided to do two strips of decorator's caulk, along which ruts were made with the handle of my scalpel. The space between them, and to either side was then covered in PVA  and the whole surface piled high with sand and grit. When dry this was brushed off.

For painting the first coat was a pot of emulsion I had got mixed at the DIY store, a sort of camel colour. Over that went darker washes of different browns to get some colour variation. Then finally a couple of lighter drybrushes. I was aiming for a sort of camel colour, which is what historical paintings mostly show. Perhaps I got over-excited sloshing on my home-brewed washes (none of your Agrax Earthshade here!), because the final result was OK but a bit darker than I'd intended.

Finally, static grass was applied along most of the edges and in strips down the centre. I used fairly short fibres, because I needed them to stand up, but didn't want bases on the road to be "floating" too high in the air. The grass was drybrushed a yellow-green, which I always think improves it. I added patches of flowers and weeds, but somehow I don't think they benefitted the final appearance, so I wouldn't bother another time.

This is what the sections look like underneath. Make sure to keep the undersides clean of debris to help them lay as flat as possible. I used both light brown and dark brown felt, the lighter colour being better because you can mark out the sections with pen, whereas the dark felt needs dressmaker's chalk to show a mark at all. On all the pictures you can see there is a tiny bit of edge-to-edge curling up. To be honest I was a bit disappointed about that, as I'd experimented endlessly with different materials and methods in order to avoid this imperfection. But they'll do certainly, and I am permanently sorted for dirt roads now. Next time we will talk about cobbled roads.