Dean’s been back in touch with a step by step on his N scale roads and streets:

“Al, cheers from Dean in New Mexico!

I recently made some more progress on my N-scale Conejos Valley Railroad and have completed the road system for the entire layout.

This includes all major roads and streets (concrete and asphalt) and a few small lessor roads (gravel). I’ll show your readers here how I did it.

I used Woodland Scenic road tape to define the major roads and their Smooth-it for the pavement. I used their gravel (finer than fine ballast) for the lessor roads.

First, I moved around some buildings that I wanted to use until I liked the arrangement; this was done before I started pouring roadbed.

Readers of my Scenic Ridge railroad will probably identify these buildings since I stole them from that layout temporarily. I’m going to rebuild them at leisure.

Here’s the arrangement I ended up with showing the building placement. Some of the buildings (six in the main village area are Woodland Scenic kits, and some are ones I built using my 3D printers).

Here’s how I put down the road tape to define the foundation for the engine house. I put down a lot of masking tape to protect the surrounding areas.

And here I’m pouring the Smooth-it material, mixed according to the instructions (one part water to two parts powder).

After all the roadways and streets had cured, I cleaned them up with scrapers and sandpaper blocks. I then painted them with acrylic paints:

concrete: Apple Barrel (Amazon) Granite Gray

Asphalt: ditto plus 20% black

Finally, I aged the surfaces with graphite or chalk, and striped the pavements with very fine black or white pens.

Here’s what the gravel roads looked like.

N scale roads and streets:

I made the bridge across the river again using my 3D printer.

Here are some more photos showing the results for this N scale:

I’ve also been finishing up the track ballasting and adding scenic turf to the open areas.

Thanks for everything you do, Al, and thanks to my viewers!

Dean”

A huge big thanks to Dean for sharing his N scale roads and streets ‘how to’.

(You can see Dean’s last post here: N scale passenger station.)

That’s all for today folks.

Please do keep ’em coming.

And if today is the day you get started on your layout, the Beginner’s Guide is here.

Best

Al

PS Latest ebay cheat sheet is here.

PPS More N scale layouts here if that’s your thing.