Laying Out a Town

[tcf511]

I'm about 60 percent finished with the major trackwork on my first layout. I have some conceptual rough drawings of where some various scenic elements will go but now it is getting time to be serious about the next level of detail.

Can anyone give me suggestions about how to layout a town within a given area? We're talking a small town in VA in the 1950s. I know that I want to model a "Main Street" shopping area. What is the best way to size out downtown streets, rows of stores, etc? I'm a long way from enough building kits to use them as templates. I was thinking I would lay out design elements on paper that I could move around to see how they fit.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

[cheese3]

How big of a space are you working with? I would make street come in from the side of your layout (have it go maybe 2' ) and make it wide enough for parking and two way traffic. Maybe a few allies and some buildings and shops and there you go!

[selector]

Tc, I think you are asking for grief if you use generalized templates to map out an entire town section in a confined space like a layout where everything else has to 'work and fit'. You would be far better off to do some research and get the actual footprint measurements of the buildings you intend to place. That way, there is no guessing about where the streets and sidewalks will actually lie, no gaping aisles when you find out that you goofed by as much as a whole inch, etc.

My advice is to nail down the details first so that the detailing works when you need it to.

[BRJN]

In HO Railroad From Start to Finish, the MR staff knew they were going to put a town on one end of the table, but it sort of "just growed" as to how it was laid out. If you have a prototype building you like, measure it and convert to scale; then make a stand-in out of 3x5 cards and soda straws. [:D] For generic "Main Street" buildings, go to your FLHS and buy a few of whatever commercial buildings strike your fancy. This will give you some idea of the footprint sizes you will have to work with. You can cheat on road widths if you have a road that is one-and-a-half lanes wide, with diagonal parking spaces coming off both sides. (My home suburb's main drag was laid out this way in 1945. Really! There is a picture - taken from atop a telephone pole, I think - at Azar's Restaurant to prove it.) The sidewalk abuts the street edge, and the buildings abut the sidewalk; no room for grass. An alley may be just barely wide enough for a UPS truck to get through - maybe 6 or 7 scale feet.

[CNJ831]

Along the lines of BRJN's suggestion, a good idea would be to build a mockup of your town, or even a portion of the layout on which it will be located, at around 1/4 size. Walthers catalog lists the dimensions of almost all their structure kits so it's possible to make scaled 3-D cardboard cutouts represently all sorts of buildings and then place them together in various arrangements to see how they might look. You'd be surprised how often what you might picture in your mind's eye simply won't fit the space available...or look ok. Working with a mockup can save a lot of money on kits that might turn out not to be actually suitable. And don't be afraid to alter commercial kits by adding a bumpout addition to one side or the rear so your structure doesn't look like everyone elses.

As to actual structures, given the era, I think you're talking about mostly realtively small one and two-story frame buildings (like those from DPM), maybe even some false-fronts, along the main street with just one or two brick structures - and no bright colors. Probably no streetlights, no parking lots, but plenty of store signage. Depending on the exact location in VA, the streets mights be deteriorating concrete rather than asphalt. Be sure there's a small, rundown, vintage gas station/auto repair shop at one end of town or the other, a dirt or grey gravel apron, and plenty of junk on the property.

CNJ831

[MisterBeasley]

This is a good time to think about your overall road plan, too. Too often, after you've got all the track down, you might find that the only place the road can go is right over a turnout, or at some very odd angle with a curve.

I've made up paper footprints of most of the buildings I plan to have, and I play with those to see how things fit. Before I even built my benchwork, I laid out a lot of the track on the floor, and then put down buildings and hand-drew a road plan on top of a copy of my computerized track plan. Things have changed since then, of course, but I did make some track plan changes as a result of that early work.

[Seamonster]

Here's some pix of the town on my N scale layout. Things have changed a bit since these were taken, and I plan to expand the town in the future. Maybe they'll give you some ideas. The road is 35 scale feet wide, which gives room for parking (12' per lane is usually sufficient).

I had some of the structures ahead of time. I first determined what I wanted in the town, then looked in the Walthers catalog for suitable structures. I laid out the road, then installed the structures I had. The others went in the blank spaces as I bought them. Unfortunately, I didn't put the vehicles and people down before I took the pictures. I'm waiting until the town is in its final location to do that.

[tcf511]

Thanks very much for the feedback. I got several ideas to work with. It would never have occurred to me to watch road placement and turnout location until I did that to myself. I can do the mockups. I have a whole series of DPM kits to start out with. Some of my industrial sidings are not fully laid out until I figure our what buildings will be there first. My mainline area is a 16 x 8 doughnut and my town will probably wrap around one inside corner. It sounds like 4" would be about right a two way street with parallel parking down one side. Thanks again.

[oleirish]

This town was layed out when I was track planing,I went out side and mesured the street In frount of my house,I think the street is 24' wide I used my HO scale ruler.

[:D]OLE'IRISH[8D]

[West Coast S]

Whats so "wrong" with having a grade crossing and a turnout? Keep the points clear and you'll have a seldom modeled, but quite prototypical arraignment. Victor on my planned S scale layout, has a grade crossing with the points in the pavement, as per the protoype this will be of "single point" turnout construction.

A two lane State Hwy. runs along the layout edge, no structures along it, except for the station. The physical town and associated road network is located well beyond the industrial spurs so I won't even bother to model them, but imply they exist. A large PFE packing house will serve to disguise the fact the one grade crossing goes nowhere.