# Gravel/dirt road grade crossing



## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

With kato unitrack, how is it done? The grace crossing pieces are obviously for paved roads. I'm doing gravel roads. Do you just use sculptamold or subverting similar to make the ramp and then what for the actual crossing? I was going to try toothpicks but I can't find square ones locally. 

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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Stripwood or styrene for the grade crossing itself, stained or painted to resemble creosote stained wood. Blair Line makes nice wooden ones in HO. Yiu might see if you can find them in N.


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

vette-kid said:


> With kato unitrack, how is it done? The grace crossing pieces are obviously for paved roads. I'm doing gravel roads. Do you just use sculptamold or subverting similar to make the ramp and then what for the actual crossing? I was going to try toothpicks but I can't find square ones locally.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G781U using Tapatalk


Square toothpicks?


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## Spruslayer (Dec 13, 2020)

These are the Blair Line ones on Kato Unitrack I put shims to bring them to the top of the rails on the angeled one but that caused problems so no shims under the radiused ones
Nice fit and easily stained or painted





Blair Line's Lasercut Wood Grade Crossings


Laser cut Wood Grade Crossings, straight, curved and angled by Blair Line.



www.blairline.com


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## Wooky_Choo_Bacca (Nov 13, 2020)

Spruslayer said:


> These are the Blair Line ones on Kato Unitrack I put shims to bring them to the top of the rails on the angeled one but that caused problems so no shims under the radiused ones
> Nice fit and easily stained or painted
> 
> 
> ...


This is almost what the crossings looked like on my first layout, used wood up against the rails and brought the "dirt" right up to the wood


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## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

Big Ed said:


> Square toothpicks?


I know I had heard that technique somewhere, but it may have been HO scale. These would be about 14"wide boards. Not sure what they would have used in the real world, but 14" is an odd sized board either way. Might work for now though.









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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Get some strip wood of approximately half that width. It will look right (don't worry too much about the scale width, as our rails are slightly oversized anyway). Make sure your cut ends are nice and neat (no jagged edges). File or sand them if necessary.


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## Big Ed (Jun 16, 2009)

vette-kid said:


> I know I had heard that technique somewhere, but it may have been HO scale. These would be about 14"wide boards. Not sure what they would have used in the real world, but 14" is an odd sized board either way. Might work for now though.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


They look like they would work for you, but not as a toothpick. 
As mentioned, see if you can get some longer ones to mix in?
Parts of a chopstick may work, I order extras when I get Chop Sun Wong Wing Suey, 
They come in handy making other things too.
Popsicle sticks too.


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## vette-kid (May 2, 2020)

The points have been cut off. I'll look into since scale lumber or the pre- made one linked to earlier. The plan with the toothpicks is to stagger the lengths, but for n scale the crossing is only about 1 inch wide. Gets pretty hard to work with at that size to glue them together. 

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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

vette-kid said:


> The points have been cut off. I'll look into since scale lumber or the pre- made one linked to earlier. The plan with the toothpicks is to stagger the lengths, but for n scale the crossing is only about 1 inch wide. Gets pretty hard to work with at that size to glue them together.
> 
> Sent from my SM-G781U using Tapatalk


Glue it up on the workbench and insert it as one piece.


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## Wooky_Choo_Bacca (Nov 13, 2020)

Going through a bunch of posts here. On the toothpick suggestion, you could always get the flat toothpicks, they'd be more like a board than square match sticks or even square toothpicks if you could find any of them


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## JeffHurl (Apr 22, 2021)

On a whim, I bout a Woodland Scenic set of wooden crossing (N scale) while in my LHS about a week ago. There's no way it's to scale either, but it looks like it will be pretty nice once installed.


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