"What size Roads and Rivers" Topic

Hi Everyone,

Just looking for a bit of guidance. Trying to get some rivers and roads for 28mm gaming. what size roads and rivers will look adequate. Width wise, 2inch? 3inch?…maybe a mix of one size for rivers and another for roads? Any comments are appreciated. Thanks.

At 28mm, any river that's practical to have on the table is going to be more like a wee stream than a river. I bought some pontoon bridges for my 15mm WW2 stuff ages ago, and my rivers were so small compared to the bridge that it looked ridiculous (imagine a 12-inch pontoon bridge spanning a 2-inch river, with most of the pontoons on dry land).

So, from a visual/realistic perspective, the bigger the better. The danger is that you get rivers so big that they take over your table and the whole game just becomes a long-range shooting match from bank to bank.

As for roads, it depends on what sort of battlefield you want to model. Again, they will need to be bigger than most people think, if you want them to be realistic. The narrowest road should be just big enough for a Sherman tank to drive down, which in 28mm scale means probably 3-4 inches wide…? If you want it big enough for vehicles to pass each other, or for a single knocked-out tank to not become an impenetrable permanent roadblock, you'll need to plan for something wider. This, of course, depends on what you have on the sides of the road. The situation will be different if you have your road flanked by bocage than if you have it in the middle of a field.

For an idea of what I'm talking about, see the photos at my blog here: link

The wider, pale roads are maybe 5-6 inches wide. I made them out of cork sheet and silicone caulk. The narrower tracks are about 2 inches wide.

I don't have the exact mesurement, but here's the roads I use for 28mm. I think it's around 2.5 inches per lane for a total of just over 5 inches wide.. Basically it's just wide enough for the 1/43 scale cars that make up so much of my post-apoc car collection.

A single lane in the USA is typically 10-12 feet. In 25/28mm that would be a bit over 2 inches wide, so my streets are probably very close to scale correct, though I don't have any medians, curbs, etc.

You can go a bit smaller to account for the narrower country roads overseas. You could probably get away with 4 inches. Maybe a smidge less, though 3 inches would be awfully small.

As for rivers, I don't have any myself, but I my buddy's Pegasus plastic river pieces are 4.5 inches wide (including a half inch or so of bank) and they look quite good.

Compared to my roads, the rivers are probably quite underscale, being more representative of a small stream. However, the downscaling is perfectly fine with me. A larger river doesn't bring much to the battlefield and just takes up space. In fact aside from my roads, nearly every other piece of terrain I own -and I suspect most folks own- has a very compressed footprint.

"here is my rule of thrum that works in any scale" Take 2 of you tanks side by side with a 3rd or 1/2 for room for them to pass each other for the shoulders and center space. That would be the size of a 2 lane road, a one lane road would be 1 and 1/2 tanks wide. a useable river maybe 3 to 5 tanks set bumper to bumper. anything smaller is kind of useless and looks like a drainage ditch.

Thanks for the responses. Appreciate the information and the pictures for reference.

I prefer skinnier roads than what Ron suggested. Generally, the lanes weren't designed for tank traffic. For 1/56 vehicles, a 2" road is a narrow single lane for a civilian vehicle. 3.5" even works for a very narrow double-lane. 4" is comfortable 2 lane civilian use. If you do 5" roads for double-tank lanes, then you're eating up a lot of table space.

I like 2-3" rivers if vehicles can ford them, 3-6" if vehicles can't ford, but a bridge-layer can drop a bridge over it. If you're playing Bolt Action, 6" is point blank shooting range.

I typical aim for 4inches wide for roads and the water in rivers, although the rivers normally have an inch either side for the banks.

I just took a tape to the street in front of my house. from curb to curb its 32ft. Its a small side street :) ( if there is a parked car or 2 on one side 2 cars will not pass each other there) yea streets take up a lot of table space. 32" in 28MM is about 5 inches not counting the 5 foot side walks and green set backs :).

I consider a river to be the water course plus the (often undeveloped) flood plain. Thus The model river represents the entire hazard, not just the water. Similarly, a road represents both the pavement plus shoulder and grassy area alongside, so even though it may be one lane wide the actual open area may be larger. Roads or rivers that don't fit that mold would be scenario-specific and delineated as such.

My recomendation is:- Take your widest vehicle and scale the road to just take it. Double it to be 2 lanes wide. This will undoubtedly be too narrow to be scale and massively overscale relative to the ground. Its just the best you can do. Don't add pavenments (sidewalks I think is the US term) as these make the roads too wide and take up too much gaming table. Also in urban areas it make the sightlines even more unrealisic. I have toyed, with marking the pavements on the roads. Artisticaly this would look better when there is no tank on it but look worse with a tank on it as its driving down the pavement.

for 28mm games i have 4" roads.

they even work in 15mm but they look very big,