Back from my holidays. I walked a lot in the fields and woods in the early morning and late evening ( before sunset). Made some useful grey sky pictures. Because of the sunny weather I did a lot of reading ( inspector Wexford), searching on Internet and following the blogs and forums on the RMweb.

Last week it was to hot for modeling in Holland for me.

So here is the entry of my result of my internet research on roads.

For my Nice Street diorama I didn’t much research for the road surfaces.

Pictures showed that:

Asphalt/tarmac in Nice Street, granite setts in Angel Yard

I used for both Scalescenes textures.

For Northall Dock I wasn’t sure which what kind of road surface would be the right one. So I did some research on the internet. Because Northall could be a part of Greater London I concentrate on that area, but also used general information from other parts of the UK.

From 1815 on important roads were macadamed, acclaimed as quiet, good- looking and quick to install. Macadam needed however a lot of maintenance.

It was also not usable for tramlines ( and I presume also railways), these were laid in granite setts.

After the World War One they started to give the macadamed roads a cover of asphalt.

Also other roads got an asphalt road surface.

At the end of the 19^th century wood blocks, often tarred for preservation, were also used to pave streets. These were manufactured until the 1950s.

Docks were embanked and walled for security and granite was laid on the quays: when new and not abraded, it was less slippery than cobbles for the horses.

Also granite setts were used to pave roads.

Track in granite setts in Liverpool.

If you are travelling through London you could travel over wood, macadam, asphalt, granite setts, cobble and unmade roads even in the 1950’s.

In early days, silver grey Cornish granites and some from Devon would have come via the GWR and tended to stay to the west side of London, the LNWR brought darker granites from North Wales, the GNR fetched setts from Leicestershire and darker granites and basalts from further North, but much changed once the MR gained access to London.

In different parts of London you could see different colours of granite setts, depending of the Railway Company that served that part of London in the past.

After reading about the development of the roads in (Greater) London, I decided to use grey granite setts for the roads on Northall Dock.

Next time the first results.

Regards,

Job