I am modeling a 2 lane concrete highway, something from the 30 to to early 60s, and i need to know the dimensions of the concrete slabs used. Anyone live near an old highway and can give me the dimensions? Thanks!
It's a pity you didn't post this enquiry about three years ago, as my local bit of concrete slab road was given a coat of tarmac (asphalt to some!) about then. From what I can remember of it, the slabs were about 30 feet long by about 16 feet wide. (EDIT: I don't recall a joint in the centre, though there may have been, which would have made the slab 8 feet wide) There's just room for two of our petrol tankers side by side, so it may be a little bit more than 16, but it's a start. Dimensions in other places will vary, of course. Regards, Pete Davies
Hi, In the area that I'm at, the lanes range from about 10 ft to about 15 feet wide depending on the amount of traffic the road carries and how old the road is. It seems that the newer roads are wider and that when old roads are being repaved that they are NOT widened unless they are being rerouted. Gary
Candy, that's good information on Interstate standards, but the request was for road designs of the 1930s before WW-II. IIRC when I started driving shortly after WW-II, road lanes made of concrete slabs were about 10' wide and 15'-20' long. Concrete technology back then could not support anything larger or the slab would break up during hard winter freezes. Remember that cars back then were generally less than 6' wide, far more narrow than the land yachts of the '70s, '80s, and '90s. Anybody who has crossed the Huey P. Long Bridge in New Orleans can confirm these narrow lane widths. The Huey P. was built in the early '30s and its road lanes are 10' wide, designed to the standards of that time. Take it from me, driving a 1997 Lincoln Town Car across the Huey P. on the outside lane with nothing but a silly pipe rail between you and the Mississippi River 225' below is bad enough. Then add a Peterbilt tractor hauling a 55' semi beside you on the inside lane, and your pucker-string will pull tighter than C above High-C, and that's not easy for a guy whose normal range is double-bass. :tb-hissyfit:
I make my concrete 2 lane hiways 3inches shoulder to shoulder. The slabs are 1.5 x 2.75 inches. 1 icnch = 7.25 ho feet. A 3 inch road would be 21.75 ho feet.
Some years ago, I visited a small-town library that did not have a big budget to buy new books, and kept a lot of its old ones. I found a textbook on Highway Design and Construction from the 1930s and copied several pages as a modeling reference. The book shows slabs 20 feet across for a two lane road, plus gravel shoulders. The slabs are shown at 20 feet long. A supplemental slab, with a slightly thinner pour for use as a parking strip, is 10 feet across. I knew there musta been some reason I was keeping this.
I remember being on the Lincoln Highway, the first automobile highway from coast to coast and completed well before 1930, as a kid and those lanes were narrow. The original route still exists around here but has been widened or moved in most places. I also remember highways with an 18" or 24" strip added on each side to make wider lanes. Hmm. I may have to model that at some point.
You may find this PDF report "State of the Art and Practice in Rigid Pavement Design" of interest. I couldn't find a date, but it appears to be of about 2000 vintage. It shows that the most common pavement, non reinforced, has transverse joints spaced less than 5m apart, and reinforced jointed pavement has transverse joints 9-12m apart. In HO, those would be 2.25" in the first case or 4" - 5.4" in the second. It would seem reasonable, then, to have transverse joints on 2" spaces. I would expect that the width of the slabs would match the design width of the lane, and would be more dependent upon the expected traffic than on the needs of the concrete.
