Makin’ Trax: Print and Play Roadways

Roads are important. From the earliest dirt tracks to the concrete and asphalt roads we use today, they help to connect us with our friends, families, and communities. Forming a network that links our towns and cities, roads make it easier for us to travel and carry goods from one place to another. So whether you like to travel by bike, by bus, by car, by foot, or by truck … let’s hear it for roads!

Now you can try constructing a road network of your own. Download and print our modular road templates. Cut out the pieces and put them together to create the roadway of your dreams. The only limit is your imagination!  

Getting Started

The templates below contain all the corners, straights and junctions you need to assemble almost any road you can think of. Download the templates, then print and cut out the track pieces. You can print each template as many times as you need to. To make longer roads just print more templates. Easy!

If you aren’t sure where to start – no worries! We’ve put together three layout ideas to get your engine going. Just print out the templates listed by each of the tracks and then use the diagram to put it together.

Layout 1 – The Simple Loop:

This track is good one to start with. It makes a great racing track and can be easily expanded on by replacing either of the short straight sections with a T-Junction

Layout 2 – The Figure 8:

Only a bit more complicated than the simple loop, The Figure 8 makes for a great small town layout. Replacing any of the sharp bends with a “T” or Cross Junction piece is a good place to start if you want to expand on this design.

Layout 3 – The Double Circuit:

Using almost every type of piece, this advanced layout is actually two separate circuits joined by a connecting road. Extra junction pieces can be added almost anywhere on this layout if you want to make it even bigger!

Of course, these layouts are just suggestions to help get you started. Feel free to change, add, and subtract from them as much as you want!

Tips n’ Tricks

• Planning your road before you build can be helpful. Try drawing a picture of your road first. This will help you to work out how many of each piece you are likely to need, and can help you put it together faster.
• Every piece can be attached to any other piece, at either end. Try flipping pieces around and combining pieces in different orders to create new layouts.
• If your layout uses bends and junctions, you might find that your tracks don’t always line up when you try to connect them to later pieces. When this happens, try adding spacer pieces in different places to get back on track. If you still can’t quite get it to work, don’t be afraid to cut your roads down the size you need. That’s the joy of paper!
•  Big Layouts are great fun to play with but can seem daunting to put together. Try breaking your layout down into small sections that can be built separately and then joined together later. This will make it easier to construct more complicated builds, plus it will make things easier to pack up later!
• Your track pieces have a glue tab at each end, in case you want to glue your track together. You only need to use one glue tab on each piece, so once you have decided the direction the piece will face, just cut the extra tab off. Or, if you don’t want to glue your tracks at all, just cut both tabs off.
• Depending on the type of printer you use, you might find that your track pieces start to curl once you cut them out. Try placing a heavy weight (stacks of books are great for this) on top of the pieces and leave them over night. Alternatively, you can also glue the paper pieces onto cardboard for extra rigidity.
  

Get Makin’ Trax!

So there you go! You now have everything you need to create a road network of epic proportions. If you do create your own Makin’ Trax Roadway, we’d love to see it. Make sure you snap a pic or even record a video of your road and upload it to your social using #motatfun (don’t forget to ask your parent’s permission first though.) so we can check it out!

Also be sure to keep checking back, as we will be adding new tilesets and track pieces over the coming weeks, so you can expand your layouts even further!