Roman Pavement
Faller 1:87 Scale Scenery Review
Roman pavement shows a very nice pattern. The medium brown grout gives the road surface a warm colour which looks more attractive than medium grey granite pavement or dark grey asphalt. The black line in the gutter indicates where a 10 mm strip of pavement has been added to widen the road to exactly 5 meters in 1:72 Scale. The sidewalk is made of cardboard. The tiles have been carved into a thin coat of interior filler, sprayed grey-green and drybrushed light grey. The City House Ruin is not permanently attached to this 50 × 25 cm Road Module, the ruin may be turned around or replaced with an intact building to change the scene.
Flecktarn camouflage uniforms make the troops less conspicuous among the rubble.
Contents
Self-adhesive Road Tape
- 100 cm self-adhesive
- 1:72 Scale Length: 72 m
- 1:72 Scale Width: 4.32 m
- Accessory: Garden Fences Nr. 521
Evaluation
Important accessory for little money: Roman pavement cost only $US 0.04 per centimeter. Paved roads and squares set the scene for many military dioramas. Anyone making modular terrain for simulation games will find this road tape very useful. Road segments made from latex are more popular, because they are flexible enough to be laid across terrain features, but they are much more expensive than road tape. In town and village models, roads may be constructed permanently, and this is where the tape comes in handy. Latex will be more suitable for country roads.
Scale Model. The paving-stones are to scale, 8 cm square, but the printed grout is a little thicker than it should be. The overall impression is realistic. Thinner grout would have darkened the colour of the pavement, and this effect would have had to be compensated by drybrushing the stones in a lighter colour.
The tape sticks to flat and even surfaces very well, even turns are possible by stretching the tape. Turns should never be laid freehand, always draw the outer and inner radius with a pencil and place the tape along the lines carfully. Turns should be wide enough to avoid folds along the inner radius. Air bubbles under the tape can be popped with a needle and squeezed out with a finger.
Roman pavement is a modern term chosed to describe this kind of pattern of paving-stones, it must not be confused with ancient Roman pavement found on the Via Appia or other Roman roads.
In 1:72 scale, the tape is too narrow for two-lane traffic which requires a road of 4.5 – 5.5 m width. The road may be widened by adding a 10 mm strip of tape, making sure that the pattern of the stones matches exactly. The black line between the two strips of tape may be camouflaged by painting it in the grout colour. It is hoped that Faller will issue this tape in 70 mm width some day, making it compatible with 1:72 scale.
The road surface is too perfect for realism. One would expect to see some dirt and damage, manholes and sewer openings along the road. Manholes can be painted on or they may be modelled in card and glued into the road at intervals. Damaged and repaired road sections would show grout of a different colour, and the grout would be dirty in the vehicle tracks. The easiest way to achieve this effect is to airbrush or drybrush the tracks with a dark brown translucent paint.
The road tape cannot be used as flexible terrain for wargames, it needs to be permanently attached to a terrain module. One disadvantage of terrain tiles is that linear terrain features are forced to conform to a grid system which ensures that roads and rivers meet at the edge of each tile. Road modules of 50 × 25 cm are compatible with the standard 50 × 50 cm terrain tiles, and they are deep enough to include one sidewalk and a row of houses.
Historical Employment
- Paved roads in Central Europe, after ca. 1750
Self-adhesive road tape is easy to use, and it looks very realistic. Roman pavement may be used exclusively in the mid-18th and 19th century, and it mixes well with granite pavement or asphalt in later periods of history.