Flexible Felt Roads

I have added a couple of links for your interest: the printable sheets for 1920's city buildings, and the YouTube site for "OJ's Models". OJ does the most realistic 1:30 scale stone wall models I've ever seen, and I think you will struggle to tell them from the real thing. He explains his (admittedly labour-intensive) methods, which I will try in 28mm at some point.

Anyway, here's some roads I made for the 1920's gangsters to further endanger public safety by driving their their cars along at top speed. I made about sixteen feet of road using this method. Like the rest of the project, they didn't get 100% finished, but in this case I've decided to show them, as I think the method used is very useful for various types of road, as well as other terrain.

These pieces are made out of ordinary felt, the cloth mostly used for cuddly toys and the like. You can buy it in craft shops or online, either in rectangles or by getting say half a metre length from a roll of fabric, which gives you a massive quantity for £12-15 say. The colour you buy doesn't much matter, as it won't show in the finished product, but do get a lighter colour, as that will mark out easily with a ballpoint pen. It cuts easily with sharp scissors. The point of using felt rather than something rigid like mounting card is that the roads can easily be bent over any hills or irregularities on your tabletop, and will stay in place. The material also has a thickness of only 1-2mm, so isn't too obtrusive.

The technique is to cut out your road sections and paint one side with thinned PVA. You then cover that thickly with fine sand, gently shake off the surplus and go over it with a rolling pin to flatten it right down. A tarmac surface is more smooth than gritty, so you need only a restrained degree of texture. Once dry, I think I applied a black undercoat via a spray can, drybrushed with dark greys and spattered lighter shades on. The edges got painted an earth colour and a bit of static grass was applied. When I say these pieces weren't 100% finished, I meant to weather them a bit more with dust and grime, but didn't get that far.

I hope this approach is of interest to some of you. Would it work for unsurfaced roads, "dirt roads" as the Americans say? More or less, as we shall explore in due course.

Here's a sample of road sections based on this method. You need to do a lot of curves of various radii, and some junction pieces.

You need to be very careful with the ends of the sections: make sure they are absolutely at 90 degrees to the direction of the road, and finished as cleanly as you can manage. That way, the pieces will butt together without conspicuous joins.

For some reason, just one piece got edged with thick static grass, using my super-power applicator. This does help blend the road in with the ground it is crossing, but only if that's in the countryside. The sections with just earth and sparse bits of grass, on the other hand, don't look out of place in a built-up area.