The Eureka article Stein refers to was a decent one, I'll warn you though it was HO. The owner had an area with a section of track that looped around 180 degrees, I believe to go into his staging yard. The guy basically just wanted something there so he built a small town with a hand ful of buildings and a passenger depot. When I was still dabaling in N scale I had a downtown of a small town planned out with DPM. It ended up only being about 12 inches long, had a main drag, a T-intersection with a smaller street at the middle. To the right it went DPM's Otto auto parts, Char's soda-shoppe, roadkill cafe, the saloon, intersection, corner turret building, and reeds books from left to right. The left side it went DPM's eriks emporium, hayes hardware, a gas station (can't remember manufactorer but it was a 30's style), the intersection, and DPM's wilhelmi's which would have been kitbashed to a 2 story structure. I wanted to keep the small town feel so the only building that was over 2 stories was the turret on the corner turret structure, otherise they were all 2 stories. I chose which building to put next to what according to the way the top was. Like the Otto's had a curved top facia and char's soda-shoppe had a flat facia. I still might do something like this on my HO layout, not sure yet though. Just bought a Seabord GP18 and an SF B23-7 yesterday, the LHS still has an Athearn CF7 in Troy & Nothern colors, and Hobby Town USA has a MR&T GP38-2 (I think Athearn) AND a Model Power 2-6-0 that I would like to all get. The Athearn T&N won't be hard to get, the LHS had 3 of them, but the MR&T GP and the 2-6-0 from Hobby Town were the only one's they had.
I know I know, I'm starting to sound like a collector, not a modeler.
Well said, Stein, well said.
Terry
Terry in NW Wisconsin
Queenbogey715 is my Youtube channel
PB&J RR Maybe I just need a fresh perspective on how to lay out the town, proper clearance from street to crossbuck to gate to building... I've never laid out a whole town
And you are not going to be laying out a whole town (or city, as you call it in another thread) this time either, unless it is a really tiny city - your layout is not that big.
John Pryke's book is a really good source on how to make something that looks like a part of a city on your layout. I know you were "flabbergasted" at the thought of buying a couple of inexpensive house kits, and I assume you might be even more flabbergasted at the thought of paying for quite a few books to learn more about modelling things, but try it - it may very well be worth it to you.
Model Railroader Magazine for January 2009 has an article on the birth of the small town of Eureka. Have a look: http://www.trains.com/mrr/default.aspx?c=bi&id=6.
There are many other articles on building towns (and cities) in MR and other magazines.
As for the question of street widths, distances from crossbucks to RR tracks etc, there are several sources for finding the prototype info, and for finding out how to model this (which is a different question than what the prototype does.
Info on prototype signs is given in the MUTCD (Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices) - can be googled on the net, if you want your crossbucks to be located at exactly the right scale distance from the tracks, it is probably covered in MUTCD. Most people just go with whatever looks good to them.
There was a discussion on crossbucks location for a layout a while back, and it ended up with that conclusion - sometimes you just have to move em around until you find a place that looks good, given the cramped conditions on a layout relative to real life.
There also was an article in Model Railroader a while back (some time during the last two or three years) about adding a modern RR crossing to the Model Railroader project railroad Wisconsin and Southern Troy (WSOR) - with crossbucks, street markings etc). Written by David Popp, I believe.
Same with street widths. Streets in real life is generally wider than what looks good on a layout. So most people adjust them until they look about right to them, putting some scale cars and people there to see what looks good. There are numerous threads on street widths, too - use the search feature on the forums to find.
A good example of good looking (in my opinion) H0 scale streets in a "city block" type structure can be found in Mr Beasley's city in this thread about "realistic model railroad city scenes": http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/135841/1524488.aspx#1524488
Here is a picture from that thread:
Layout is H0 scale. Buildings are two and three story buildings, and he wanted the "urban canyon" look down the street the buses are on. Cross street roadway is 3" wide, street running directly ahead has a road way 2 1/2" wide. Side walks are also wider on cross street than on street we are looking down.
Again - use the forum search function to locate more information.
Stein, a little grumpy due to a stomach bug that has me pretty well worn out ...
Somehow I missed this the first time around. Saw your later post and then found this one. I can't answer your prototyp questions on the real world. But I can what I am doing. I went out into my neighbor hood and measured the street. It's wide enough for 2 lanes of traffic and parking on one side. That gave me a basic width to start to work from. Same with a side walk downtown. drive around some and you will find there is some real variation on both in any given city. Then i got out some vehicals and played around to see what looked good and if you want the tracks down the street include the tracks and a couple of cars in your experment.
With the building locations I wanted the look of a city already in exsistance when the RR showed up. This ment really tight clearences. No one is going to be wanting to hang off the sides of a car while switching. MRmag likes to use large radius curves 18" or greater on there industrial tracks. I won't go any larger than 18" and most times a lot tighter than that, I 've used 12" in places and will be again.
There was a city planing thread a few months ago. Run a seach and you should come up with it. Had a lot of references listed that showed up in the MR press.
Jack
Go to the top of the page to Shop, then Model Railroad Books, then Scenery and you will find "Building City Scenery ...." I'm not familiar with the book, but it sounds like it might help you. I have seen several scenery books with suggestions on how to set up streets and buildings for depth, etc. by setting things at angles to hide depth or lack thereof. Sorry I don't remember just which books mentioned them.
Good luck,
I am looking for assistance in finding resources either, written, professional, or MR experience in laying out the largest town on my layout.
This week I've been building a set of DPM kits, because I want that classic look for Penneburgh, I have some thoughts about the town, maybe I just need a fresh perspective on how to lay out the town, proper clearance from street to crossbuck to gate to building... I've never laid out a whole town... Now, the other town, Jameson, no problem... its a company town, owned by the railroad, so just outside the gate to the yard are the company store, town offices, bank and post office. The neighborhoods are laid out according to level of employment-section chiefs and other officials, on down the line where eventually you get the average working stiff raising a family in a shotgun house on a 35x70 foot lot....