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8 Responses to Best Way to Make Dirt Roads and Streets
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I use silver duck tape and rough it up for city streets.. I use emery sand paper for asphalt and regular sand paper for dirt roads,
I used card stock for paved roads and painted them gray. For dirt roads I used real dirt. Bake for a while to dry it out Google and kill any bacteria. Looks great when done.
When you use real dirt for roads, how to adhere it to the card stock or layout.
When you use real dirt and bake it in an oven, how do you attach it to your diorama? Do you use white glue solution mixed with water. Do you spray it with the solution as you would for track ballast?
Harris. To use found materials a gravel road (more like a cinder road) I have used old sanding belts from a table belt sander. To take it a little further I grind up fall leaves in the Wife’s Blender till it is real fine and sprinkle it on the sanding belt leaving some of the belt showing to give it a dried mud hole look.
I stretched the idea of the Wife’s blender idea. But if you want to do that I’d have a new one standing by to enhance the story. Actually I use an old garage sale blender that you can get for a few bucks. Put some leaves in it and add water. Blend it well and drain into a screen and catch the water to use on your next load. Take the mixed mess and in the screen and dump it into a plastic tray. Continue to make more for the job you need. in the tray let it dry in the sun, and put a light fan on it to dry it out. Mix it some so the lower pile gets dry too. Don’t dry it too fast as the fan will blow the dried part away. The drying process will take several days. After it is dry, use various size screens to sift the leaf veins and larger material out. Later on take what you wish in small amounts and run it again through the blender dry and sift it through smaller screens. Continue this till you get it to the ground quality that you need. Various leaves, reds yellow Purple plum will get you different color textures and will make you a very nice dirt or in larger rough ground will bake good mulch for your flower beds and gardens. It sounds like it is messy and a lot of work and it is some what. But you got to rake those leaves anyway so you might as well make good use for them. I have a whole bucket full of Japanese red maple leaves ready to run through the blender now. It will give you a cypress mulch look. Great for flower beds circles around tree trunks and bedding at green houses.
I did a demonstration of grinding this stuff at a train show once and as this family came up I said hey kids, Look what you can do with your Mom’s Blender when she isn’t looking and you should have seen Mom’s eye’s when she heard the idea. I have told the Husbands about the new blender idea to them and make sure you got caught using her old one to surprise her with the new.
I an getting ready to experiment with Rit dye and dye some of the ground leaves in different colors as an alternative to colored foam for trees. Free is a lot better than 12.00 a bottle for ready to go colored foam. The best thing is it is your work, not bought, your using natural materials, and it is fun creating without spending a dime. I just pulled a broken sanding belt off and will use it somewhere on the layout, most likely on an unimproved road.
Enjoy this idea, I do. from Newman Atkinson
After baking ground soil in oven, how do you attach it to your layout. Can you use the white glue and water solution? Can you spray the to as you would for ballast?
Years ago I found an old wooden window box with small ecru colored sandstone bricks glued to it. I took the bricks and smashed them into various sized pieces including a fine powder for dirt roads and a sandy school playground. The sandstone can be stained with any water based paint to get the colors that you need.
I used some ground color tile grout at Home Depot that works good, it comes in different colors to match what ever you are looking for.