Builders Foam and rubber tires

I would have thought you would have put something on top of it when you built the road. I thought it was pretty hard. . Maybe the paint softened it up and created the ruts. 

Hopefully the owner of the car learn his lesson about parking on freshly laid asphalt on a hot summers day..

I see a vignette here.  Put some orange barrels and a Road Closed sign near the SUV.  Add some construction workers with concrete tools and forms and a cement mixer.  Have a police officer speaking with the driver explaining that the Road Closed sign means ROAD CLOSED!

Tom

Did anything else end up sinking, or was that the only item that sunk in like that? Seems odd for the dense, hard foam to do that.

I'm guessing a chemical reaction.  Reminds me of the Postwar Lionel #65 handcar, where the men's feet melted into the plastic of the handcar deck.

That is the problem with polystyrene foam, even vegetable oil can eat away at it. Acetone, turpentine any oil based paints. Usually I try to put a coat of plaster over any polystyrene on the layout that I use....

Similar to the problem of artificial fishing worms melting into the styrene tray of a plastic tackle box. Chemical reaction...

Bill in FtL

Most of my Die Cast vehicles stick to any surface when they sit for awhile. But this is the first time I have seen this so bad. Have a bulldozer that tore its tracks apart when picked up off painted plywood.

Clem

The whole street is like this! Any vehicle with rubber tires sank into the foam. I'd have to declare the entire neighborhood a disaster zone.

I do think Pete and Bill have the right idea: Its a chemical reaction between the foam and the plasticizer in the rubber. The reason why I did not put something on top of the foam is the street also has a trolley run. I used E-Z-Streets for the track, and simply cut a recess in the foam for the track. That part worked really well! But talk about the Law of Unintended Consequences...

At this rate, coupling this issue with a few others, I think I'll just tear it out and replace the base with wood.

Chris

LVHR

Heavy poster board. Grey for cement. Black for asphalt. You could even cut it into square "blocks".

Hit the edges with colored chalk, crayon, marker etc. if the white of the paper core shows bad. Black on edges that touch each other for tar sealant.

I've seen worse here in the past actually.

A primer or gloss coat 1st, might, i mean MIGHT, MAYBE, help to prvent this. Sealing is key, and flat paints don't seal as well as glosses or primers. And some primer doesn't really seal well so much as it provides function as a cheap source of paint for a base coat as top coats are more expensive.

Sandpaper (black unless you want a dirt road,then cheap med to coarse brown sandpaper, The coarse usually has black, grey and white specs of sand in it too)

I

Adriatic,

Thanks for the ideas!

Chris

LVHR