Asphalt Roadway Paint


D&J RailRoad

D&J RailRoad

Professor of HO
I have about 6' of road surface I need asphalt color paint for. The road has some curved sections that don't match up to the printed roads available through various vendors.
I don't want to buy dozens of paint jars to try to make my own.
Does anyone know of a vendor paint that is made for this purpose? Walthers makes something that appears to be road surface paint, but there's no detailed description or picture of it.
I'm interested in a proven product, not an idea for me to go try.
 
I had a similar situation when I was adding paved roads to my layout. I went to Home
Depot on a sunny day and grabbed a bunch of paint color samples that I thought might
be the right color as asphalt and took them out to the road area of the parking lot. Asked
a bunch of people for their opinions and finally decided on the following.
DSC00463.JPG

I got a sample size jar of flat paint mixed for a couple of bucks.

DSC00272.JPG

Here is a newly "paved" road.

DSC00424.JPG

This photo is another road after being weathered with gray chalk and alcohol. The "sloppier" the alcohol weathering-the more realistic
it looks.
 
I could go into all kinds of reasons for what color is needed for where.. i deal witht he real ones and there are nurmerous reasons for why the colors is varied so much. Bestanswer for anybody doing roads a light medium grey over a cementicious material with a white grey dry btush and india ink wash will get the closest to that speckled grey white black pattern of well worn surface. I should do a video series on how real roads are built maintaned
 
I would suggest you find a textured gray spray can of Rustoleum ir Krylon. Get a plausible road texture at least price. Get the acrylics for washes for achieving final surface colors, grease streak, skid marks, etc.
 
C&OMtnMan said:
I would suggest you find a textured gray spray can of Rustoleum ir Krylon. Get a plausible road texture at least price. Get the acrylics for washes for achieving final surface colors, grease streak, skid marks, etc.
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Did you actually try this yourself?
As I noted in my op, "I'm interested in a proven product, not an idea for me to go try."
 
Asphalt is a dark, fairly black color when freshly laid, but time and traffic lightens it up to more of a dark/medium grayish color as it ages over the months and years. Therefore, if somebody offers "Asphalt" as a color, who's to say its the only correct color for asphalt?

What I do for asphalt is take some cheap acrylic flat black craft paint, pour some in a small container, then mix in some flat white or flat gray acrylic craft paint, a little bit at a time, until the color (the desired age) starts looking good to my eye. Then paint it on and call it good. You can come back after it dries and add road markings and weathering as desired.

You can find cheap acrylic craft paints at Walmart, Hobby Lobby, Michael's, and maybe at any other discount or craft-type stores. I even noticed my local Walmart currently has some of their craft paints priced at 58 cents a bottle for flat, opaque colors! One bottle of flat black and one bottle of flat white or flat gray sure won't break the bank, in my opinion.
 
A proven product for me is 400-600 grit wet/dry automotive sandpaper. To weather it, just rub your fingers on it and you have instant blacktop road or parking lot.

YaguI5h.jpg
 
C&OMtnMan said:
Yeah, I did; otherwise I wouldn’t suggest it.
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I had to ask, because we often get responses to try something that the poster hasn't done themselves but only thinks it might work through arm chair analysis. Too bad if it doesn't work out and ya wasted your time and resources.
 
D&J RailRoad said:
I had to ask, because we often get responses to try something that the poster hasn't done themselves but only thinks it might work through arm chair analysis. Too bad if it doesn't work out and ya wasted your time and resources.
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Mind you, what I did was for N scale; your sig suggests you’re working in HO, so the resulting texture might be too fine to suit you.
 
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