A question that might be of interest to other foreigners as well...
We've all seen the pedestrian crossing lights in the movies and on TV...
How common are they?
Are they in all major cities?
Do they appear in towns?
Are they just at crossroads with traffic lights?
I'm planning a downtown (I think... what exactly is "downtown? ... I'm planning edge of industrial slighty run-down suburb - but "brownstones" (so long as they're not just New York) not low rise. [Boy is a "foriegn" country complicated???] - passenger/commuter station as part of the next layout. Out front there will be a bus turn-around/stop and a crossroads between a very small side street and a main-ish drag -with switching lines down the middle -
Now the question is... how do all those nice commuters get from the station to their factories without getting run over?
Would there be pedestrian lights? In with traffic lights? Pedestrian without traffic lights?
And of course, the important question... does anyone make a model?
TIA
For the most part pedestrian crosswalk signals are in areas where both vehicular and pedestrian traffic is heavy. It allows time for pedestrians to get across busy intersections. Most, I've seen, seem to be with traffic signals. Sometimes on the same pole.
Occasionaly, there have been pedestrian only crosswalks(schools), usually like above, due to heavy pedstrian traffic. A lot depends on size of "downtown", amount of traffic, and how many people got hit by traffic.
As for a model. I don't know, check Walthers.
They're all over the place around here in Canada, mostly push button activated as noted. Saw some while in the US this year that had digital count down timers, giving the amount of time left to get across the street.
Some busy intersections have sound signals too, for vision impaired people. The ones around here sound like "cuckoo, cuckoo".
One day a guy asked me what the sounds are for, and I told they were for blind people, and he said he was amazed that blind people were allowed to drive! (just a joke I heard somewhere that seemed appropriate here!)
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
First, one thing you should know is that New Yorkers don't pay attention to traffic signals - pedestrian or otherwise.
Second, you've hit one of my "pet peeves".
When I was a young man growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia in the late 50s and 60s the larger towns and, of courese, the cities had "walk/don't walk" signals at intersections. The electic signs lit up with either WALK (in white lights) or "DON'T WALK" (in redish/orange) as appropriate.
Simple? Yeah, too simple!
In the late 70s, early 80s it occured to the powers that be that not everybody in this grand land could read English. So the text signals were replaced with graphic ones. For "Walk" there was a simple graphic of a man walking (in white lights) and for "Don't Walk" there is a graphic of an upheld hand (in red/orange).
But wait, it gets better!
Somewhere in the era of politcal correctness that was the 1990s (or thereabouts) it was decided that the graphic pedestrian signals were not good enough. Some people still did not "get" it. Nowadays, these graphic signals are supplemented with text signage (usually on the pole that supports the signal) explaining the meanings of the graphic signals in both English and Spanish!
In the words of Charlie Brown, "AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!"
-George
"And the sons of Pullman porters and the sons of engineers ride their father's magic carpet made of steel..."
A typical small town American Downtown:
http://www.enlasnubes.org/aug2004/Maquoketa/pages/0069_downtown_Maquoketa.html
Well-constructed buildings clustered close together along a network of streets that is conducive to pedestrians. Usually serves as the traditional "public face" of a community
A typical look at the montronsity that has, unfortunately, replaced downtown:
http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/files/reno.jpg
A landscape of look-alike backlit plastic corporate logos and oversized boxes filled with chain stores. Dependent on automobile travel and generally hostile to any other form of transportation.
millrace wrote: A typical small town American Downtown: http://www.enlasnubes.org/aug2004/Maquoketa/pages/0069_downtown_Maquoketa.html Well-constructed buildings clustered close together along a network of streets that is conducive to pedestrians. Usually serves as the traditional "public face" of a community A typical look at the montronsity that has, unfortunately, replaced downtown: http://www.notesfromtheroad.com/files/reno.jpg A landscape of look-alike backlit plastic corporate logos and oversized boxes filled with chain stores. Dependent on automobile travel and generally hostile to any other form of transportation.
reno.jpg can't be too terribly hostile to pedestrian traffic. There's a NO (raised, closed hand) showing on the pedestrian signal box attached to the traffic light pole in the photo.
One variant sometimes seen is a pushbutton operated signal at a point where there is no intersection. There will be standard three-color traffic signals positioned to control the motorized traffic and box-style pedestrian signals facing along the crosswalk.
The latest signal sequence here in Sin City goes - green traffic signal, green "walking man." "Walking man changes to yellow "hand," flashing once a second, with countdown from 20 to 1 alongside. Yellow traffic signal and red 'hand.' Red traffic signal.
Hope that didn't confuse the issue too greatly
Chuck
Wow! Just three & half hours and all this good stuff! Thanks all!
I probably should have said "mid 80s west-of Chicago" as usual but the answers are great anyway.
One thing they remind me of...
When I was in Yugoslavia in about 1969 the pedestrian lights showed white outlines. The "Dont walk" was like a cross between a skittle and a Christmas tree and the "Walk" light was like the sign on a "Gents" door. They were "Walk" at the top - reverse to our normal of Red "Don't walk" figure very like the "Gents" sign and Green profile figure clearly striding/leaning forward "Walk" sign. Don't know about anyone else but to me that Gents sign of a head-on figure could be read as a profile of someone walking... some nice stranger reached out and grabbed me and pulled me back from a rather large truck.
Writing this makes me realise just how hard it is to describe the images with the meanings in just words... so please don't "AAAAARGH"! too loud with Charlie Brown! (Without looking at an old sign that you see every day try to describe it... it's amazingly hard... this also goes to noticing the detail that we put into our layouts... there are so many things we "see" every day that we don't notice at all.
It's really weird to recall this after all those years! All my posts here...and one or two other things... might never have happened.
Anyway... thanks for the great answers... keep them coming please!
Okay... so the next part of this...
A rider comes into the station on a commuter shuttle (running left to right on the layout as seen from the viewing side) on his/her (PC) side there are warehouses...
1. Would these have been being turned into "lofts" by the 80s?
Getting off at the station he (Non PC) finds himself on an embankment and has to take a subway type stair to street level. (Oops... that's subway as in street underpass not Underground railway/metro/U Bahn).
2. How bad might the graffitti be in the mid 80s?
Coming out the station front... horrible glass fronted 70s Amtrak thing... He has the buses in front of him, shops to his left and right for just a couple of fronts and then the main drag across his path.
If he does a U turn he can walk back under the track.
3. If the track is on a string of bridges would there be small businesses under them - like we have here?
Straight on he can go down a narrow street opposite. To the left of this is a factory and to the right a demolition site. You may have figured that he is walking toward the viewer so he is about to fall off the edge of this world. It occured to me that, used on the front edge of a baseboard "background structures" like Walthers' "Fireproof storage and transfer" (933-3189) could make excellent demoition sites... most of the building has already been "removed"/knocked down...
So then the area might have some housing like their "Parkview terrcae Apartments" ((33-3176)... among other things...
Would housing mix with industrial/commercial/storage like this... at least as the area changed character? Bothe changing structures in some places and usage in others?
Sorry, Dave, wasn't ARRRGGGHing at you - just at the beauracratic ineptitude that would require bi-lingual text signs to explain (supposedly) universally understood graphic signals. That and the fact that the government thinks we are so stupid that we cant cross a street with out a government instruction manual!
It depends on a lot of things. How heavy industry is used, if rents are higher it eliminates the lower class crowd, if rents low or buildings are empty it attracts homeless, druggies, crime, then people stay away from area. They want to feel safe, day and night.
A good mix would be fairly industrial, with a typical daytime shops, (lunchenettes,delis, pawnshops or thrift stores, a small druggist, a gas station/ autobody /repair shop, etc) and some low/mid price rent type housing.
Most long bridges I've seen didn't have any buildings underneath, except an occasional newstand/ hotdog vendor, but if there's enough room, I've seen cars and truck trailers parked under them. Even a ramshackle plywood/cardboard shack for the homeless.
One thing I've noticed is that the more flamboyant graffiti didn't start appearing until the late 80s or early 90s. This not a hard and fast rule and there are certainly exceptions to be found, but I feel the further back you go the less gaudy and less noticable graffiti should be. Also not all of it should be "serious".
I remember back in the early 80s I worked in the Washington D.C. area. Every day I would pass under a railroad bridge (plate girder bridge) just before I passed the Washington D.C. LDS Temple. The Temple is a beautiful piece of architecture. It must have reminded someone of the Emerald City from the movie The Wizard of Oz because on the side of the railroad bridge I mentioned earlier, someone spary painted "Surrender Dorothy".
Referencing only the demolition site:
By your time period, implosion was the preferred demolition technique for urban areas. CDI had been in business for a quarter of a century by then. Depending on the stage of demolition, the structure would either be selectively gutted (skeletonized at ground floor and at selected floors above ground, other floors relatively untouched,) gutted and prepped (wooden boxes or geo-cloth wraps around columns, wires to a central junction point, with one leg running off to a safe location for the blasting machine) or a pile of broken building materials mounded on the ground. The transition from gutted and prepped to a junk pancake only takes a couple of seconds.
The only time walls would still be standing is if the building had burned and collapsed - and they wouldn't have been left standing long (too dangerously unstable.)
Just a thought
Chuck (who lives where casinos implode every time a certain blonde comes to town)
PA&ERR
No problem! I know the feeling. Every time I cross the border into Wales I cringe at the bi-lingual signs. I'm just waiting for the government to tell the English Counties that they have to go bilingual too in order not to discriminate against the Welsh.
When the DLR extension opened to Lewisham the "Stay off the tracks" warning signs were in a huge number of languages... all with the same pictogram. Why use a pictogram at all? I think the signs had nine languages... not enough we had at least 15 major groups in Lewisham. My last neighbours were Sri Lankan Christians... got out in what they were wearing... lovely people who all worked hard every day - except Sunday. One side of my family were probably refugees about 200 years ago.
Thanks again for all the info!
Just a further thought... would there be some buildings that wouldn't be imploded? ( not half so much fun ) but would be knocked down with the good old ball-on-a-chain and jack hammers? I got the whole idea from a HUGE crane smashing a factory down in West London last time I was down there. Figured that the cut up steel skeleton would make some good gondola loads while trucks could handle the rubble... the new Athearn Macks are superb...
Um ... why are the columns protected with geo-blanket or boxed in if they are going to be blown up? I can understand it if the building is being gutted to be re-furbished... but???
Then again... if it's being imploded... they pull out the insides and then collapse the walls inward? Wouldn't this look much the same as a burnt out shell?
Dave-the-Train wrote:Um ... why are the columns protected with geo-blanket or boxed in if they are going to be blown up? I can understand it if the building is being gutted to be re-furbished... but???
LongIslandTom wrote:[Safeco Field I think is an absolute must-visit place for baseball fans who also love trains... The BNSF mainline runs past the stadium directly outside the right outfield bleachers, and on average a BNSF train passes every 10 minutes or so.
Is that the stadium where the trains run through/under the gear/tracks for the opening roof to slide out/open on?
mid-80s "west of Chicago"...doesn't narrow it down much. Two-thirds of the country is west of Chicago. Mid-80s creates a problem, in that there were very, very few commuter trains in the western US in the 1980s. Amtrak at its low point, aside from San Francisco and a few other places there are no streetcars, a few cities like San Diego are experimenting with "light rail" (the 1970s/80s term for a streetcar, as "trolley" was considered horribly old-fashioned) and expansion into suburbs where commuter rail never ventured is still happening furiously. Rail travel itself was at a low ebb.
Loft conversion: Generally only in big cities, and generally not in the west. Conversion to lofts has mostly been a 1990s to present day thing. Big cities in the 1980s central cities were generally not doing well, and other than a few token attempts at revitalization, most of the effort was to expand outward into suburbs which were reached by highways filled with cars. Except for the most forward-thinking communities, rail transit didn't fit into the picture at all.
Graffiti: In the west, not dreadful but bad. Again, it's a big city thing.
Horrible glass fronted 70s thing: Do you mean an Amshack? Amtrak never really bothers to build railroad stations, and they certainly didn't in the 1970s. Mostly they just used existing train stations, taken over from the private railroad companies, or they built a small, low-slung single-story tilt-up building (commonly known as an Amshack) and used it instead. In many cities, a big, grand union station would sit boarded up and dilapidated for decades, with passenger business done in the Amshack.
"on a string of bridges"--I assume you mean elevated trains? Generally, the only place where you'd see an "el" is in the biggest cities in the eastern and midwestern United States, especially in the 1980s. They weren't used in the western half of the country at all, so far as I know. In Chicago, the el is generally run above city streets, and there are businesses on the sides of those streets, but that's the only el I have direct experience with.
Great stuff agin! Thanks!
Sorry I live in a North-South country and never remember to re-orientate for the US. Go very far east or west here in the Uk and your feet get wet.
To be more specific I guess that I'm thinking of a fictional city about halfway between Chicago and the arc of cities actually directly "west" - from NNW to SSW - of Chicago. This could put it on a route for Amtrak links. If it's big enough (and progressive enough) it might just have its own "Metra" system.
I can't get my head round US distances... it's a bit of a big country.
I suspect that I'm trying to fit US and UK practices together... possibly a bit too much. So far I have behaved and kept my RR almost exclusively freight... but I do like some of the US passenger trains.
I especially like the bi-levels and other stuff using cab cars.
Regeneration is exactly the sort of thing that I'm looking at starting... providing a sense of change and opportunity to put old and new side by side. (i.e. I get the best of both worlds).
I don't mind little graffitti. A small amount (especially humerous or ironic) would be good. My business names mostly relate to movies and movie characters. (S & J Connors. Futures).
"Tilt up buildings"? Do you mean sectional/panel built? Is there a reasonable model of one by anyone?
Pics? Please?
I don't mean an El because they are specialist trains usually on their own tracks. i'm thinking more of a grade seperation which is largely on fills held up by retaining walls with fairly numerous bridges over the local roads. Local freight will still be at grade... using ideas from the Chicago street systems - which I think were mostly Milwaukee Road. Kingsbury Branch?
I thought that the 80s were a bit early for lofts. I'm looking for that beginning of turn around from run(ning) down apartment blocks close to industrial areas (from the days when people walked to work or caught the trolley) to the industry having changed/gone and new accomodation being developed.
Thanks all for your help. It's greatly appreciated.
Yeah. A really big country. I lived in the UK for a few years, and the difference in scale, and perception of distance is incredible. The size and scale of the US seems to be difficult for Europeans (and UKers, some of whom have no interest in being Euopean, and I don't want to step on any toes!) to grasp.
I guess your fictional city is going to be something like St. Louis, MO, or possibly Denver. dilemma I see is that a city with the industry running down, and out, in the 80's is probably not going to have the money or incliation to have developed a commuter rail system. The cities where this did happen seem to me to be the newer, growing cities, especially along the West Coast. I could imagine something in Dallas or Houston (oil money, status symbols), or maybe Denver, while I don't see it in a St. Louis or Kansas City. I don't even know where I'm headed here. To support some of your thoughts you need a pretty dense population, in an "old" city. Once you get west of Chicago, there's not a lot of that to be found, that comes to my mind, anyway. So maybe you have a fictional twin to Chicago, but it really can't be much farther west, because there wasn't much between there and the west coast. Remember that most of the cities and towns between the Missippi River and the west coast came into existance to suppport the movement of people through them, not because there was any reason for a population center to develop. There are a lot of towns along the railroads, but that's the only reaon they were there. The big industry was agriculture, which does not lead to big cities. Maybe someone else has an idea.....
Jeff But it's a dry heat!
The "arc of cities" directly NNW/SSW of Chicago are generally known as "Chicagoland" and they are all basically suburbs of Chicago. About 9 million people live in the vicinity of Chicago, and while some of the cities are relatively self-contained, much activity is directed in towards the center. The same pattern happens in other United States urban centers: the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles Basin are similar (about 9 million in the Bay Area, around 20 million in the LA/Orange County basin) with semi-independent cities surrounding a central core. The dominant mode of transit is by car, with public transit taking a very distant second. I am somewhat familiar with Chicagoland territory (born in Skokie, much of my family lives in the Chicagoland suburbs) so I can provide a bit more detailed information about that.
For starters, the cities around Chicago don't have their own "Metra," they are served by Metra, or were served by Metra's predecessors. Amtrak stops once or twice in that neck of the woods (Aurora, I think) but that's all. Local service is provided by buses rather than independent streetcar lines. The diesel-powered Metra trains run on the same rails, for the most part, as freight trains, rather than their own track. Most of these cities are suburban rather than urban in character, predominantly single-family homes, with small downtowns of 2-4 story buildings and often "brownstone" type residences.
In some cases there are grade separations on berms, with short bridge/tunnel arrangements for cross traffic, but typically the Metra stations are at street level and most local streets that cross the tracks do so at grade crossings (the street crosses the track, rather than over or under the track.) Most of the stations that I saw on a couple of Metra trips were the older interurban stations, with a few small scruffy modern buildings similar to Amshacks. (By the way, tilt-up buildings are probably the same as sectional/panel built. The idea is that concrete is poured into forms on the ground and the walls are literally tilted up into place. Cheap, ugly, rectangular. Model them by painting a shoebox beige.) Closer to downtown there are some elevated stations, they seem fairly similar to "El" stations but the track also carries a mix of passenger and freight (saw plenty of freights going by waiting for Metra trains.)
I have some pics somewhere and will scan them as soon as they get a bit sorted out (I just moved, everything is still in boxes including my photos and most of my hobby stuff.)
As to regeneration, there was a long period of abandonment and decay between the era when people lived close to work and took the streetcar and the still-developing era of return to urban cores. The phase you might be looking for is "gentrification," a process normally started when a cheap, dangerous and run-down ethnic neighborhood is discovered by artists, punks and students looking for low rents and landlords willing to tolerate loud parties, band practices and unauthorized activities in their buildings. Eventually enough punks and students are present to draw businesses that appeal to punks and students (record stores, coffee shops, nightclubs) and before long the area has a certain "rustic charm" which appeals to professional types who don't want to live in the suburbs. These professional types move into the neighborhood, get the clubs shut down so they can get some sleep and raise property values so much that students and punks can't afford them. In trying to model this, I'd say turn up the "graffiti" and "unattended trash pile" knob, and if you can get (or modify) miniatures to look like punks and students (a few guys with mohawks and leather jackets, some skinny guys with suits and ties riding scooters for mods, etcetera) it would add considerable local charm. Most of this decay/gentrification, in the Chicagoland area, took place within Chicago proper, rather than the suburbs.
V&SRR...
Thanks! I've never been called a UKer before...
Your point on finance is good... maybe I'll shuffle forward toward the 90s a bit. Some of my inspiration comes from the approaches to the river bridges in Kansas Cuty.
I thought Milwaukee and "mo'town" were west of Chicago? Can't find my Rand Mcnalley yet again... I'm sure that thing goes on trips on its own...
Any more ideas will be greatly appreciated.
Jetrock...
Great stuff
Reminded me of that essential, ghastly word "gentrification"... we were always going on about it when I did my "Regional History of the North West" Degree Unit. (Come back John Walton, all is forgiven! [Er; i don't mean "John Boy"]. I gues that I'm familiar with the concept... updated with "Yuppeeisation or Yuppeefication with what I call "Trumpton Vernacular" "housing" with plastic neo Greco-Roman facades. YEUK! Trouble was they didn't convert to lofts but ripped everything down and built with whipwood and plastic. There's more shakes in that timber than Sheiks in the old Hollywood movies.
London is about 7 million so I guess Chicago would feel about the same - except for cultural differences... I'm not thinking of Chicagoland but the next step west... out toward (I think) Milwaukee. I've no idea how big that is.
I imagine that a fictional city of about 5 million? So Chicagoland would help.
I checked and it was the Kingsbury Branch that I was looking at... except this looks a lot more industrial and business with very little residential.
I guess that the very vague image I have in my head would relate to Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey and the rest... which I realise is pretty hopeless as they subject areas were all over the place and not exactly "contiguous". (If that is the word). At least i'm not looking at Charlie's Angels for inspiration.
I often think that you would all have a better understanding of how the rest of the world sees /pictures the USA if you considered the diet of TV and films from the US that we get fed. It's not exactly a real world but it is more "real" than any geography text book.
Anyway... your ideas (and all the other contributors on this thread0 are really helping me to get a better idea of what I am looking for.
THANKS!
Dave-the-Train wrote: Your point on finance is good... maybe I'll shuffle forward toward the 90s a bit. Some of my inspiration comes from the approaches to the river bridges in Kansas Cuty. I thought Milwaukee and "mo'town" were west of Chicago? Can't find my Rand Mcnalley yet again...
I thought Milwaukee and "mo'town" were west of Chicago? Can't find my Rand Mcnalley yet again...
I think that Kansas City and St. Louis might be about all the choices (for "real" cities).
Detroit is well east of Chicago. Milwaukee is straight north, right along the lake, only about 90 miles. Almost a suburb. Population is around 600,000.
The thing about this country is that there is a lot of wide open space, and compared to your neck of the woods most of it is only recently developed (and huge areas are still pretty much deserted). For example, Arizona didn't become a state until 1912. The population was pretty much on the east coast and along the Gulf of Mexico for a ling time. Then the area between the coast and the Mississippi was grown into. The discovery of gold in California in the late 1840's led to a rush to the west coast, but the area between the eastern population and California was pretty much just a obstacle to be crossed. Indians, desert, mountains, lots of reasons not to stop and stay. As far as transportation, except for the Mississippi/Missouri River system, there was not much useful waterway, and the transcontinental railroad wasn't completed until 1869, so though there were raw materials in the west there wasn't really any way for industry to develop there.
Anyway, there is an incredibly abridged US history lesson. Don't know if it helps, but I hope it gives you a bit more to think about....
Good luck!
Chicago has about the same population density as London, but the actual population of Chicago is only about 3 million people. The 9 million person "Chicagoland" is spread out over a vast geographic area including the remainder of Cook County (the county containing Chicago) and five neighboring counties, about 5500 square kilometers. The rest of Illinois is miles and miles and miles and miles and MILES of flat, flat farmland to the west and south, with occasional small country towns (aside from Springfield, which is less than 100,000) until you hit the Mississippi River.
A fictional city of five million people? That's quite a fiction, considering that only one city in the United States (New York) has more than 5 million people (Los Angeles is second at 4 million, Chicago at 3 million.) I suppose you could surmise a fictional "Metropolis" or "Gotham City" (the homes of Superman and Batman, respectively, both based loosely on New York) but it's kind of a stretch.
There are only nine cities in the United States with populations over 1 million (although San Jose is coming close.) The cities of this size west of Chicago are all in California (Los Angeles, San Diego, San Jose) or Texas (San Antonio, Dallas) except for Phoenix, Arizona. All of those cities are VERY different from Chicago in geographic makeup: population density is one-half to one-quarter as high (western cities have LOTS of room to grow) and typically were built around the automobile, with rail service almost nonexistent. The only exception was the Los Angeles basin, where interurban commuter rail was originally common and spurred huge geographic growth, but the local electric interurbans and streetcars were all converted to bus by the 1950s/early 60s and heavy commuter rail was pretty much an afterthought.
As mentioned above, Milwaukee is north of Chicago (about a two-hour train ride) and Detroit is considerably northeatst of Chicago. Milwaukee's population is about 600,000. The other cities of comparable size to Milwaukee are a day's travel or more from Chicago: St. Louis, Minneapolis, Denver, Kansas City, Omaha--all cities with populations in the 300,000-600,000 range. Really, the next city to the west of Chicago that is of comparable size and population is Los Angeles.
Trying to use TV as a way to view a nation is a very, very bad guide. Take a minute and consider what the UK would look like if your only experience of it was from watching "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "The Benny Hill Show" and maybe "The Young Ones." (Quite frankly, that is most Americans' exposure to the UK!)
by the way, "Cagney & Lacey" was set in New York. "Hill Street Blues" was shot in Los Angeles with some exterior shots in Chicago, and the producers deliberately made an effort to avoid pinpointing exactly where the show took place.
Dave-the-Train wrote: I guess that the very vague image I have in my head would relate to Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey and the rest... which I realise is pretty hopeless as they subject areas were all over the place and not exactly "contiguous". (If that is the word). At least i'm not looking at Charlie's Angels for inspiration. I often think that you would all have a better understanding of how the rest of the world sees /pictures the USA if you considered the diet of TV and films from the US that we get fed. It's not exactly a real world but it is more "real" than any geography text book.
Jetrock wrote: Trying to use TV as a way to view a nation is a very, very bad guide. Take a minute and consider what the UK would look like if your only experience of it was from watching "Monty Python's Flying Circus," "The Benny Hill Show" and maybe "The Young Ones." (Quite frankly, that is most Americans' exposure to the UK!)
You mean "Little House on the Prairie" and "The Waltons" aren't real?
Seriously; thanks again for the brief guided tours. They really do help. I am amazed by the distances, town sizes and such low populations. I'm sure we (foriegners) all think of the US as having lots of people... it's hard to connect that with all the space. Would it be fair to say that there are more "small town" Americans than city dwellers?
In my part of the West Midlands I reckon that most small towns are 12-14 miles apart... that's 6-7 miles to each halfway point... so walking in to market once a week (or less) would be about 2 1/2 o 3 hours walk each way (allowing some time for children and/or livestock).
Coming out of central London I found that I could get around faster but that my miles shot up. I had to start watching my fuel bills pretty fast.
I think that your selection of British TV just confirms my point. "Three Weddings and a Funeral", "The Remains of the Day" and "Billy Elliot" would do pretty much the same thing.
Nevertheless, ignoring the "social" content films and TV do at least give images of the physical culture (buildings and vehicles) and these can be linked to pretty specific years. I happened to flip to "Every Which Way but Loose" the other week... starts off with Clint driving an Athearn Ford C. I checked the film on the web later and in the "Goofs" lists I found nobody noted that right at the start when he turns into the truck yard part of his load falls off.
Anyway...
Thanks again for all the great help.
Hey! At least you don't have Lucille Ball any more!
The thing about the US is that generalizing almost anything doesn't work. In the northeast things are laid out a lot like Britain/Europe. The towns are pretty close together, and kind of compact, with small rural areas in between. Other than the new highways the roads are more liek the roads over there, from town to town, winding around the farms or geographic features. As you move west, say between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, I think it feels like the towns get a bit farther apart, and a bit less compact. Once you get west of the Mmississippi, things really start to get spead out. It can be 50 miles between even relatively small towns, and there is so much space that even the towns are kind of spread out. Of course, the density jumps up again along the cost, but even then the cities have a totally different feel than the east coast/European type cities.
You are probably right that there are more small/middle sized toen inhabitants than large city, but I don't have any number to back that up. I would have guessed your villages a little closer together than that, at least it felt that way in Lincolnshire, but they were little villages.