Modelling realistic looking urban railroading scenes

 [I love railroad scenes set in urban (city like) surroundings, and am building a layout set in urban surroundings myself (Warehouse district on the west bank of the Mississippi in Minneapolis ca 1960).]

 I would only add that Minneapolis is in Minnesota, not Ca.

Those are a lot of great links! Thanks

Vic Smith has been a long time favorite urban modeller of mine. His work has been featured in a few magazines over the years - I can sit there at great lengths and study the pictures, always seeing something new ....

Unfortunately, try as I might, his work seems to be VERY limited as to any online content (?) ANYone have any links to share ?

Mark.

 Wow - those Vic Smith layout pictures look good !

 I just remembered another web page with urban layout pictures:

 Urban Modellers SIG: http://www.trainsarefun.com/urbanmodeling/urban.htm 

 This web page contains links to several other great urban layouts (The Severna Park Model Railroad Club layout - featured in MR recently, Bill Denton's Kingsbury Branch, Jim Senese's Kansas City Terminal and several others).

 Nick Kalis also has a web page here with "41 hints for urban modellers":

 http://www.trainsarefun.com/urbanmodeling/41hints.htm 

 Smile,
 Stein

Since you gave me the great honor of inclusion in your list, I'll start off with some technique pictures.  This area is "downtown Moose Bay," really just a couple of intersections with a few 3 and 4 story structures.  I was playing with how to do this myself, but I was pretty happy with the results.

My first step was to elevate the base level for the structures just slightly, just the thickness of one sheet of styrene, so that I could fill the space between with "asphalt," which in my case is Durham's Water Putty.

Then, I made up the "sidewalks," again from a sheet of styrene.  For these, I traced the outline of each structure, and cut out the center so that the structures would sit inside the sidewalks.  This hides the base of the buildings, and also provides a light-block so that those buildings with illuminated interiors don't have light leaking out at the bottom.

The streets are painted "gray," and the sidewalks are "rainy day gray," just enough of a difference that the eye can distinguish the two.   I applied lines to the sidewalks with a #2 pencil.

I didn't use prototype-width roadways for a couple of reasons.  First, I was limited by space, and second, the narrower roads compress the scene a bit and enhance the "concrete canyon" look of cities, even if the buildings are only 3 stories tall.  This look down Penny Lane shows the narrower roadway, 2 1/2 inches, as opposed to the wider 3 inch thoroughfare of Lonely Street, where the red-and-white 56 Chevy is passing:

I increased the tightness of the scene even more by using narrow sidewalks, too.  This is the dimension where I was squeezed for space, so I crunched it down.

Hows about another Vic Smith pic ? ....

Mark.

Thanks so much for including my layout in your list of links, Stein, and thanks too for all of the other ones - some excellent modelling there.

Wayne

  Mister B - thank you for a great explanation of how to do foundations, streets and sidewalks to create that wonderful urban canyon feeling even with fairly low buildings. I hope people are taking notes - that looks like a technique that produces really good looking urban canyon style streets! That last little non-urban corner on my layout really cries out to be redeveloped into a small city neighbourhood with streets like that! :-)

 Mark - that Vic Smith layout picture with the really tall buildings behind the raised track is amazing. Do you happen to know how deep this scene is and what he did here ? In general, I see people recommending doing up to four-five layers to get forced perspective - full size building in front, then partial building, then almost-flat, then paper cutouts glued to brackdrop.

 Wayne - your obviously belongs on my list of inspiring layouts that have citylike parts - what you have done with the part where you have the coal dealer and icehouse etc looks very convincingly like a city.

 And 60YOKID and Grampy - yep - I meant Minneapolis circa 1960, not Minneapolis, CA :-) I guess I should have included your city, too, Grampy - your layout might not come across as mainly an urban layout - but that large city served by the Reading you have in the corner of your layout is a wonderful scenic background city.

 Keep em coming people - there are quite a few wonderful urban scenes out there!

 Smile,
 Stein

Back in 1971-2, I built what was supposed to be a scene typical of Berlin Germany on a 27" x 34" layout.  Not any really large or tall buildings, but density.  Double-track elevated line and station, grade separation for vehicles.  Making nearly all the buildings in the 5-6 story range would have been better for this Berlin scene.

I have not even started mockup of the downtown city scene for my Galveston layout.   I have done some mockup placement of buildings for the amusement district.  Most of these are IHC Victorians I bought built-up as kitbashing fodder.

This is not big-city downtown, but it is not small town and it is not 1950s suburbs.  It is the not-far-outside the downtown district of a medium sized city.  Mostly 2 1/2 story houses but the DENSITY and lot patterns should suggest town lots.  Galveston had alleys with small secondary houses as servant quarters in late 1800s and cheap rentals on same lot as fine front houses in 1900s.

This is a tiny alley house.  I want to cram many of these into the residential district.

I grew up in the 'burbs outside of New York City.  This led, naturally, to my fascination with subways.  When I returned to the hobby after a long absence and found the LifeLike R-17 subway trains, I knew what I wanted to model.  My subway stations are not so much prototypical as memory-typical.  They emphasize the things I remember from childhood, like the tile walls and girder construction.  They've been tempered a bit with more recent visits to our local Boston system, another classic which adds the variety of light-rail cars to the mix.

Another strong memory of growing up in the Transition Era was advertising.  Although many of us think of ads plastered on buildings and billboards as a blight, the old ads themselves and the products they represented trigger old images for many of us.  These pictures instantly take us back in time, which is one of the goals of my railroad.  To detail my structures, I turned to the Internet to find old ads, and then spent some time learning to print and apply my own decals.  While most of us strive for smooth, clean decal applications on our trains, I'm just delighted when a decal applied to a rough brick surface looks like it's been out in the weather for a decade or more:

Yeah, Ted Williams, the Boston Red Sox, and Moxie.  If that doesn't bring a smile to your face, well, then, you must be a Yankees fan.  (Sorry, Brooklyn Dodgers myself.  How many of our younger members know that the Dodgers, Giants and Yanks could get between their respective ballparks on the subway, lo these many years ago?  And the Dodgers even got their name from the streetcars of Brooklyn - they were originally the "Trolley Dodgers.")

This is another one, one of the few ads I specifically searched for.  I added a small urban park, named after made-up Civil War hero Colonel John Buford Brad.  The park which bears his name is an inside joke for Ranger and Bruins fans:

Another thing I always noticed on trips into the city was fire escapes.  Unknown out in our sprawling suburban neighborhood, they were a fact of life for the low-rise apartments where my parents grew up.  These are the Walters ones, added on to the back of Model Power's "Baldy's Barber Shop."

I have a place on my layout where a number of tracks go to different levels. (Yea, I know, the grades are kind of steep looking. Each level is a two inch change.) The rear bridge will go to a Walthers Ore Dock.

One challenging part was to find some simple, acceptable, and good looking bridge supports and then make them look realistic. The simple supports are from an HO Lionel overpass set that I bought on eBay. The track was supposed to be attached directly to them, but I used them as supports for deck girders etc. and added concrete footings at the bottom.  You can see them on the front bridge and the back bridge (red).

Another challenge was the supports for the middle bridge and two supports (far right) for the rear bridge.  It turned out to be an imagineering project. One that entailed thinking "How would they have done it in the real world." I wound up using girders to span the lower track and made the supports for the upper bridges rest on them.

The buildings for this scene are missing as I haven't unpacked them yet, and more work needs to be done in other areas as it is not complete yet.

Good lookin' scenes Mister B.    I took inspiration from a lot of my chilhood impressions, too, although most of my scenes are "interpretive" rather than models of a specific site.  The "wrong side of the tracks" looked so inviting, but was off-limits to a five year old.

Wayne

Mark R. wrote:

Vic Smith has been a long time favorite urban modeller of mine. His work has been featured in a few magazines over the years - I can sit there at great lengths and study the pictures, always seeing something new .... Unfortunately, try as I might, his work seems to be VERY limited as to any online content (?) ANYone have any links to share ?

 I found this web page: http://www.pbase.com/golden1014/miscellaneous_rr_photos&page=1

 Seems to be more pics from the same Vic Smith layout (in St Louis) ?

 Speaking of St Louis - the Gateway division of the NMRA has done several small project layouts where they have used city buildings as a scenic divider on a 4x6 or 4x8 H0 island style layouts: http://www.gatewaynmra.org/project.htm

 Smile,
 Stein

MisterBeasley

How many of our younger members know that the Dodgers, Giants and Yanks could get between their respective ballparks on the subway, lo these many years ago? 

Probably even fewer know that Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds were on opposite sides of the Harlem River, less than a mile apart. You could see one ballpark from the other. I can't believe they are going to bring down Yankee Stadium. It should be named an historic landmark. And I grew up hating the Yankees.

I believe Steinjr was using "ca" to indicate circa, meaning around that time. (fomr Latin)

Jimmy

hcc25rl

I believe Steinjr was using "ca" to indicate circa, meaning around that time. (fomr Latin)

Jimmy

 You believe correctly - as I wrote in my post from August 31st 2008 (ie over six months ago) in this thread :

steinjr

And 60YOKID and Grampy - yep - I meant Minneapolis circa 1960, not Minneapolis, CA :-)

 Anyone have any new pics of urban switching layouts ? 

 My layout is still very much a work in (slow) progress, and it looks downright ugly compared with the beauties further up in this thread, but here is a picture from a fairly urban part of my layout :-) :

A CMSt.P & O ("Omaha Road") GE 70-tonner comes down the mainline through the mill district in Minneapolis with a loaded reefer car for "New York Egg and Butter" a little down the line. To the left we see about 2/3rds of the 24 silos of the North Star Elevator and Mill Company.

 Middle track runs into the Mill building (black cardboard place holder straight ahead). Tracks to the left goes off to Williams Hardware warehouse and to Hunt's Perfect Baking Powder Company (which may eventually turn into the flour shipping building for the North Star Elevator and Mill).

 And here a link to a thread posted by forum regular markalan, describing his Portland Terminal Railroad, which is a far nice looking urban layout than my layout:

 http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/140225/1562248.aspx

 Smile,
 Stein

Hi: Stein, I was wondering how your layout was coming along. It's looking good, so far. Will those tracks be street running?

Grampys Trains

Hi: Stein, I was wondering how your layout was coming along. It's looking good, so far. Will those tracks be street running?

  Mmm - street running would have been cool, but I hadn't really planned to make this section street running - I was more envisioning something like  several parallell RR tracks on  a dedicated right of way, maybe with a dirt track for trucks and cars along the RR tracks.

 Some prototype photos of ROW and roads from 1958 (I am shooting for about 1957 or so):

 http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/image.cfm?imageid=180282

 http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/image.cfm?imageid=180281

 http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/image.cfm?imageid=180279

  Here is a newer picture of the milling complex taken while I am working on fitting the new milling building in the front (it is just kept together with tape at the moment):

I know the picture is too dark, and that the grass and dirt track road still looks darn ugly - was just a quick experiment

  Part of my intension is that there will be elevated enclosed walkways/conveyor belts across from the building flats along the wall to mill building in the foreground - one above where the tank car is in the last picture, one above where the reefer car is in the first picture.

 Model railroad inspiration for the elevated walkways from forum regular poster Dr Wayne's layout:

http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/gallery/image.php?image_id=95

http://www.the-gauge.net/forum/gallery/image.php?image_id=85

But I also found some prototypical inspiration for elevated walkways in the milling district:

http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/image.cfm?imageid=79034

http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/image.cfm?imageid=79253

http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresources/image.cfm?imageid=169996

Smile,
Stein

 Hi Stein: Thanks for the update. It looks like that is going to be an impressive and interesting scene. The hardest part is figuring out what you want to accomplish, and you've certainly gotten that well in hand. I'm looking forward to seeing the completed area, I'm sure it will be great!  Please keep up posted.

 I highly recommend John Pryke's Building City Scenery book.

Currently, the majority of my urban railroading scenery is limited to larger industrial buildings...

But I do have the basics outlined for my town scene

Nick

I just wanted to say this a great thread. So much info and incredible layouts.

Great topic.

 I for one have always thought an urban setting that begs to be modeled, is the "Flats" along the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland OH in the transition era.  On the downtown side of the river were many small industries, businesses and warehouses that were served by rail along a narrow shelf on the river bank. On the opposite side of the river were many heavy industries including steel mills, and shipbuilders, all served by rail.  And if you like to model bridges, the Flats had them.  From river level draw and swing spans both road and rail, to towering spans that carried both roads and rails (under wire no less) across the river valley to the downtown area and Terminal Tower.

  The Cleveland Public Library has a wide selection of historical photographs available for on-line viewing. http://cplorg.cdmhost.com/  I encourage all to take a look. Just type flats into the search box. I found these to be quite inspirational, and trust others here will do the same.

One of these days I will decide what I want to model, but the Cleveland Flats is definately on my top ten list.

Jim J. 

Quite a few years back MR had a good article on Urban Minneapolis railroading or was it RMC? Anyways after an hour of looking I came up with articles by Earl Smallshaw. He has a ton of articles on the urban scene.In May (* Bill Denton has a good article called Switching Chicagaos North Side.Jan 99 Art Currens article called a two faced industrial siding is a good one for space saving.Sept.200 MR has a good article on a Boston switching layout thats outstanding. Thats all I could find so far. Even Furlow had an urban design. BILL

reklein

Quite a few years back MR had a good article on Urban Minneapolis railroading or was it RMC? Anyways after an hour of looking I came up with articles by Earl Smallshaw. He has a ton of articles on the urban scene.

Here is a search from http://index.mrmag.com that lists articles by Earl Smallshaw that has been cataloged:

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&sort=A&output=3&cmdtext=SMALLSHAW%2C+EARL

 Some of his articles:

The other side of town - city scenery
Model Railroader, July 1992 page 70 

Urban scenery - good article on all aspects of city scenes
Model Railroader, July 1989 page 102 

Modeling tenements
Model Railroader, February 1989 page 76 

Urban Modeling of a Small City
Layout Design Journal/News, November 1987 page 31

reklein

In May (* Bill Denton has a good article called Switching Chicagaos North Side.

Switching Chicago's North Side
Model Railroader, May 1998 page 58 

Other articles by Bill Denton:

http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&sort=A&output=3&cmdtext=%22DENTON%2C+BILL%22

 You can see some pictures of Bill Denton's Kingsbury Branch on the Urban Modellers SIG web page

http://www.trainsarefun.com/urbanmodeling/urban.htm 

 This web page contains links to several other great urban layouts (The Severna Park Model Railroad Club layout - featured in MR recently, Bill Denton's Kingsbury Branch, Jim Senese's Kansas City Terminal and several others).

reklein

Jan 99 Art Currens article called a two faced industrial siding is a good one for space saving.

 

 Haven't read that one - what's the basic concept ? Having buildings on a peninsula which look different on each side (ie so it looks like one business when viewed from one side of peninsula and another when looking from the other side of the peninsula), or having one track serve industries on both sides of the track, or something else ?

reklein

Sept. 2000 MR has a good article on a Boston switching layout thats outstanding.

 That would be John Pryke's Union Terminal RR - a 4 part series on building it appeared in Model Railroader from September 2000 until December 2000.

 The series eventually was expanded into an excellent book modelling city/urban scenes.

 John Pryke: "Building City Scenery for Your Railroad".

A plan for a particularily interesting scene from this layout used to be available on Andrew Martin's web site http://andrews-trains.fotopic.net/p14832720.html.

 Sadly, it appear like Andrew's web site is no more - it appears to have been parked some time during the last 6 months. John Pryke's book (and back issues of MR) are still very much with us.

 Smile,
 Stein

Looks like you got a pretty good handle on these articles. I did'nt look at MRs search feature till this morning. I actually went through my collection of MRs and physically looked at each one for the article. Still didn't find the Minneapolis RR. I feel a little dumb. The advantage however was that I saw a lot of stuff that I didn't know I was looking for.I'm one of those persons who can't simply look up one word in a dictionary,I always get sidetraacked.

The Curren article is how you describe it,in that it is a peninsula with a track down either side with buildings in the middle as a view block.I'm not much of an urban modeler as I like te logging and mining scenes that I am familiar with in locale where I live. Painting all those window sill is daunting to me. BILL

This is excellent timing, I just decided to finish a long incomplete HOn30 microlayout with dense urban/town type scenery, this thread will come in handy.

BTW ...I am NOT the same Vic Smith mentioned on page one, just to get that on the table if any newbies get confusicated, he lives in the mid-west, I'm on the west coast. Seen his stuff published, it is very nice.

Anyway more questions likely to follow as I resurrect those long dead parts of my decades old past in HO. Vic

reklein

I actually went through my collection of MRs and physically looked at each one for the article. Still didn't find the Minneapolis RR.

 Hmm - wonder if Mpls layout you were thinking about be Linda Sand's "Industrial Switching in N and H0", from Model Railroad Planning 1998?

 Those were two excellent L shaped urban industrial switching layout plans, set along Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis.

 Smile,
 Stein