Is there a rule of thumb? What do you use for the roads?
Thanks, David
Roads can vary considerably in width - just take a look at the this chart from the US DoT.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
The roads on my HO scale railroad would never qualify for any real highway specs. I use a variant of selective compression to avoid filling my limited space with roadways. Typically, my roads are about 3 inches wide. I don't allow parking on most of my roads, but there is room for vehicles going in both directions to stay in lane.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I side with MisterBeasley on this. Now and then I have visited layouts or seen photos of layouts where the modeler's city scene has full width streets, to scale - and it is jarring how much space they take up. Impressive to be sure but one street becomes dominating, and a simple complex of streets crossing each other starts to leave very little space for trains.
My goal is to make the streets and highways plausible and to try to capture the sense that a business district street is wider than a residental street which in turn is wider than the alley where the garage is. The goal is not to be inaccurate, but to strike a balance between accuracy and the fact that even a good-sized layout is actually capturing a pretty puny portion of the area modeled. For the same reasons, our industries tend to be smaller, our trees shorter, our "mountains" not even as high as foothills, our rivers and creeks rather narrow, our utility poles are closer to each other, "distant" cities are a short stroll from each other, and rural or even wilderness scenes are closer to residential and industrial than you'd see in real life. And our trains are almost all shorter too. With all that compression, to suddenly introduce full width streets (but retain all the other compromises) would be disorienting.
But yeah if I could be reduced to HO size and be expected to drive a car on the streets I model I suspect I'd feel very hemmed in by cars coming the other way, or parked to the side.
Dave Nelson
As they say, "There's a prototype for everything!" I used to live on Tecumseh Way in San Diego. This residential street barely allowed a single lane when cars and trucks were parked on both sides which happened more often than not. It was often comical when opposing traffic tried to figure out how to let each other pass. Why this street was built so narrow when most of the other streets in the same neighborhood are much wider I don't know. But it does make the congested roads on model railroads seem more plausible. I like to compress my roadway lanes down to 9 feet. They look a little tight for trucks and buses but are fine for cars. I also reduce the lane widths as the road moves away from the viewer towards the backdrop. This provides a little forced perspective further enhanced by placing smaller vehicles near the backdrop. The few streets with curbside parking allow only about 7 feet for the parking lanes.
Hornblower
It more a matter of how narrow can you make the road and get way with it. A real two lane road has 10 foot lanes in either direction and enough shoulder to park cars on both sides of the street. In HO that makes 20 feet for the two travel lanes and 16 more feet to allow parking, say 36 feet. That comes out to 5 real inches, which sucks up a lotta room. You can squeeze things down. Real automobiles have a track of 4 foot 8.5 inches. Allow a little more width, say 5 foot for cars, and in HO that comes out to about 3/4 real inches. Make it one inch, and you have a two lane road that is only 2 inches wide, but no room for parking on the side of the street. Saves a lotta room.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
On my layout, Indian Line, named for a real road, is a paved two-lane country road...
...but it peters out fairly rapidly once out of view...
Walnut St., in downtown Dunnville, is fairly generous, but there's no parking allowed...
...while on parallel Liberty St., only a block away, parking is allowed, as the street dead-ends at the tracks...
In Lowbanks, the main drag into town is similar in width to Indian Line...
...but soon fades away...
...to nothing...
This one's about 2.5" wide....
...but also dead-ends at the tracks...
The road into not-yet-finished Elfrida is about the same width as Indian Line...
...but this background street, also in Elfrida, is only 1.5" wide...
No point in wasting real estate.
Wayne
DAVID FORTNEYIs there a rule of thumb? What do you use for the roads?
No. Use what looks good, and as Dave says,"plauseable". You've been shown some great examples.
Mike.
My You Tube
I design roads for a living, and YES there are design criteria, based upon real safety data, analyzed and compiled over now many years.
However, what era are you modeling?
Any roadway narrower than 16' scale feet in width, in America, would be considered to be a single lane road, by TODAY's design standards.
Many rural roads today vary between 20' to 24' paved width, but curves are supposed to be widened to the inside to help. Unpaved roads can be less.
On Interstates and toll roads, today we are looking at 12' lanes, and 12' paved shoulders inside and outside for new construction if the truck traffic is high enough. Again, this is new construction and not merely reconstruction of I-83 with a 1' inside shoulder and high median barrier (glare screen), as is all too common in southern Pennsylvania.
A lot of rural roads were 18' to 20' for a long time.
John
Wow Wayne your layout looks fantastic! how big is the over all size of it?
Thanks for your kind comment, wolf10851.
There'a a layout (room) tour, with lots of photos HERE
....and an aerial tour of it HERE
...and an update on the first thread, showing the addition of a partial upper level can be viewed HERE
The layout is in an oddly-shaped room of about 560 square feet, but with the partial second level, there's about 500 sq.ft. of actual layout.
doctorwayne Thanks for your kind comment, wolf10851. There'a a layout (room) tour, with lots of photos HERE ....and an aerial tour of it HERE ...and an update on the first thread, showing the addition of a partial upper level can be viewed HERE The layout is in an oddly-shaped room of about 560 square feet, but with the partial second level, there's about 500 sq.ft. of actual layout. Wayne
OMG looking at the aerial photos all I can say is 1 thing........Can you come to my house and help me with mine lol