Evening Everyone,
I have my new layout taking shape here and I've seen some posts on the site here dealing with modeling urban areas and so I thought I would post my "shot" at trying to model an urban area on here. I've always wanted to have a model train layout, as I've always had model trains really all of my life, and I've always had a love for cities (especially Chicago) and so three years ago I began one of the greatest building projects that I've ever undertaken: building a model railroad set within a large-scale downtown area. I wanted to model some buildings from Chicago, so when I made my annual trip there that Christmas I took many pictures of the Sears Tower and thus have tried to replicate it on this layout. As you can see in the attached URL link that has the pictures of my city on them, the Sears Tower is the tallest building in the background towards the left-center of the picture. To the left of the Sears Tower stands a replica of on of the rederings of New York's new Freedom Tower, to which while I was building this building the design plans on the real tower were changed again. In front of the Freedom Tower are the towers that used to occupy that space in New York-the World Trade Center. I wanted a "financial center" component to my city and I thought these two buildings would be both fitting and appropriate for the site. I have many other high-rises on the layout, some of which are Department 56 buildings that I have purchased in Chicago for this city over the past few years; another of which is a Lego building that I built this past Christmas (The building labeled "Chicago Police"). I also have a Menards and behind that is my replica of Cincinnati's Riverfront Stadium (a.k.a. Cinergy Field). I basically grew up in this stadium and thought it would be neat to try and replicate it on my layout as well.
There are about 10 or so streets that form a grid within the downtown core and that grid more or less terminates at the stadium. I do have a functional street lighting system (from Walthers) across the entire street grid as well, along with many, many cars and trees.
Obviously, nearly all of my buildings need painted and detailed here, a project to which I will be starting on as soon as the weather warms up! Many of the buildings here are scratch-built by me in our garage. As shown in the pictures, I do decorate the city for Christmas. The city is lit different colors during different holidays through the year--red, white and blue for Memorial Day and the 4th of July, etc, but most of the time the buildings are lit up in just white LED lights. All of the major high-rises have red LED warning lights on them.
The track forms a simple loop around the edge of the layout with an elevated loop through the downtown core. I am currently building two commuter stations and will place them within the downtown core this spring. My biggest project though will be painting and detailing, as mentioned earlier.
I will attach more photos as I take them with my other running trains in them. I mostly model modern freight and have mostly GE Dash 8s, 9, and AC4400 engines, although I do have the SD70mac, GP 38 and SD 40-2s as well.
Please remember that the buildings, while built, are still a paint-work-in-progress. They are just sitting on the layout-meaning I can pull them off whenever I want to without damage. The layout is also cut and bolted down the center for easy disassembly and reassembly if needed.
Hope you all enjoy!
Joe