I've been making a TON of progress over the holidays.
I freaking hate modeling cities. I don't know why I keep doing this to myself.
Why? Because EVERYTHING needs to be so precise. You've gotta make sure the angle of the road over
here lines up perfectly with the edge of the building over
there, etc...
Anyway, here's a reminder of the area I'm trying to recreate. It's changed a good bit since the 1970s, but you can see the bones.
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.966879,-76.7300055,3a,75y,154.31h,90t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sHtx_txFMMU-C-0EV4qtBlw!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D0%26panoid%3DHtx_txFMMU-C-0EV4qtBlw%26yaw%3D154.30854354497296!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTIwOS4wIKXMDSoKLDEwMDc5MjA2N0gBUAM%3D
As much as it pains me, I must remember it
is a model railroad so I've had to make a number of compromises when it comes to sizing of things and arrangements, but it's important to me that when people familiar with the area see it they know exactly what they're looking at.
One of the annoying aspects of urban modeling is the need to really focus on the "Z axis": getting the height of all of the terrain properly located in relation to the tracks.
You can see, for example, in this photo that the tracks are sitting at the same level as the road.
I originally did the "good model railroader" thing of laying the track on cork. Good for sound deadening, pain in the a$$ for scenery.
Instead of just covering the whole thing in Cork I decided to use layers of 2mm craft foam to allow for gentle variations. That's worked reasonably well but there were still some gaps between sheets and transitions to make. I used my favorite
@davefoxx trick and slathered on some lightweight spackling. It's worked great.
A coat of gray paint (because when you look at photos it's the predominant ground color) also provided a good surface for drawing on the outlines of buildings, streets and sidewalks.
That let me sort out, for good, some of the more tricky locations where I was messing with reality.
In this case, simplifying this area:
Into this:
Where possible I based the road and sidewalk widths off of the prototype. Honestly, I can't imagine what doing this would've been like without having Google maps on my phone.
With things laid out I started cutting styrene for the streets. Unlike last time I decided to go with plastic streets instead of the paved DAS clay.
Then it was onto sidewalks. I couldn't believe my luck in that I can reuse most of the ones I made for the previous iteration of York on my old layout here. I had to cut a few new pieces, but I'm largely covered. One thing you'll note is that in the Streetview images there's a lot of brick and fake brick. That was all done during a recent spate of "urban rejuvenation" and in the eras I care about it was much more mundane.
Here's where things currently sit. I think I'm ready to start painting and weathering streets.
And lastly, I had to do a little railfanning. Here's some light power passing through CP YORK and over Poorhouse Run.
