Greetings!
I am in the process of building my first town. I have several buildings and would like a city street between them. Looking at Google Maps, I have come up with pavement that is 5 1/2 inches wide for a street with two driving lanes and parking on each side. My sidewalks are 1 1/4 in wide. I think these are good sizes. If not, don't hesitate to give me advise!! But I would like to put dashed striping down the center of the road. Actual road striping is 10 feet long with a 30 foot space. This converts to roughly 1.4 inches long with a space of 4.1 inches. This doesn't "look right." Any ideas?
Thanks! Wayne_PRR
Look for the MUTCd. It will tell you everything you need to know about what you are doing. That is the master manual used for roads and road markings
shane
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
Just as getting things right is commendable, remember the further away anything is, the less you see.
Scenery one actual foot away is 87 feet away in reality.
Buildings further away look closer together.
Detail items that are close to you that you want to look at. Beyond that scenery becomes a blur.
See what you see and not what you thought you saw.
Just my
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
I agree that to a model railroader 1.4" stripes and 4.1" spaces will look huge. The problem is that modelers are usually looking down on the street from above and a driver is looking at the street from at most a 10 degree angle. The driver sees the lines and spaces shortened considerably. As an example if there is letters on the street, the driver sees them normally but from above they are stretched vertically.
To remedy this most modelers adjust sizes and spacing to make it look good to them.
'Yipes Stripes' My HO stripes are 1/16" wide x 3/4" long, 1 5/8" spacing
Regards, Peter
I think of the centerline in town as being solid. Spaced stripes for passing zones out of town. Just a thoought.
Have fun,
Richard
There's a thing called "selective compression," which means we shrink some stuff to make if fit. I shrink my roads. I model in HO, but most of my roads are only 3 inches wide. I argue that I model the Transition era, so modern highway specs aren't necessary.
The narrow roads and lack of on-street parking give me a better feel of modeling a tight urban street scene. The narrow roads do that, while saving me layout space. It's modeling, just not prototype modeling.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
cowmancenterline in town as being solid.
I agree Richard, A double yellow solid line would be more appropriate to modern main street USA
I spent most of last winter working on a city scene. I found some double line yellow pinstrip tape to use for the center lines and single white tape for intersections. I wanted to live with the look and spacing of the buildings for a while before finishing the job so I moved on to another project without doing the striping.
My son lives halfway across the country and hadn't been home for a couple of years so I was showing him everything I had done since he last saw the layout. He doesn't know much about the hobby but appreciates the time I spend on it. He looked at the city scene and he asked when I was going to add lines. I guess I need to put that near the top of the job jar.
My streets are not terribly wide so I was thinking no lines would make them appear wider. My scene is about shoulder high so that might not matter. If an untrained eye noticed the missing lines immediately they are more important than I thought.
Rick
Because I model an older era, I use white, not yellow, for the lines in my streets. I don’t normally use a center line at all. I do have lines at intersections and particularly railroad crossings. I use a white gel-pen from an art supply place to create the lines.
Thanks to all the information! I will reduce the size of my dashed lines until they "look good" from "our" point of view.
Kind Regards to all!
Before the 1972 Federal Standards, every state had different road striping standards, not to mention road signs. So if your layout is set before that date I would look for driving manuals from to states to see what the road striping was there. Usually, dashed center stripes mean "pass with care", solid stripe means no passing.