Admittedly, my present layout is a little “loopy”. I made it by expanding a basic loop and spurs 4X8 design by adding on to the end and sides when I moved it to a bigger house. I added some sidings and yards to maximize the trackage but didn’t think how or why model roads would come into play. (I didn’t start with realism of function in mind.)
Am I alone in this or do most modellers have well-planned road ways winding through the layout and serving the structures and functions?
I just don’t see where I could place a roadway entering the layout from a side and travelling via level crossings to where it is needed…too many turnouts and stuff seem to be in the way.
Mine is the same. I operate from a central operating pit (I have to duck to get to it) around which is my folded main. I like the railfan side of operating a layout, although I learned from my first layout that you gotta have a yard as a minimum. I thought I could dispense with staging, but I quickly learned how wrong I was. Otherwise, your nice roundy-round is cluttered on the sidings and in the yard because there’s nowhere else to park things.
That means I have no real need for highways. I do have a token representation of a village with part of a street and a church, two houses and a store, but that is it. Just enough to add some realism and variety to what they eye beholds.
When I did my track planning, I included roads in the process. I had a bunch of old brass track, so I laid that out loosely following the plan, and added some buildings so I could visualize the whole scene. (There’s another entry in your “10 uses for brass track” monologue.) Even so, there are parts of my layout that I can’t “drive” to, but I can live with that.
So, even if you’ve got your track plan and you’re happy with it, there’s still more to consider.
I don’t think it’s necessary to have a road that leads to each building in turn. Roads can be implied by having short “stubs” that dead-end at the tracks and lead off-board. You can also imply them in the aisle or against the backdrop by having the backs of the structures face the tracks.
As for my planning, one of the rules I set for myself is that “everybody needs a way to get to work” at my industries. While I didn’t include a network of roads and streets that visibly connect to each other, each industry has a parking lot with at least implied access to roads. Actually I have only one true road, and that’s for the grade crossing I wanted to model. Look at the town of Lakefield in the layout plan I posted here. I think that it gives the feel of a town with streets without having to fit a whole street network in.
Model an early enough era, and the railroad would be the primary highway. There would be roads for local travel and distribution, but most things distant would be reached by rail. Logging and mining camps and small towns sprang up beside the rails because of the easy access and “commute”.
Caveat: the ‘to be covered with scenery’ portions of my layout - aren’t. I’m still building out my hidden staging and thoroughfares.
Two of the prototype rail routes that enter into my planning served areas that, in 1964, were completely devoid of roads more substantial than game trails. My freelance coal hauler, like the prototype that inspired it, will be (more or less) paralleled by a ‘road’ that was little more than two parallel ruts with gravel in them. The only place where there would have been a paved, two-lane road will have one - but most of it will be virtual, in the aisleway along the length of my junction/engine change point.
While I have a double garage to work with, the actual surface area available for track and scenery is finite, and most of it is spoken for for track, rail facilities or topography that isn’t very road-construction friendly. In that, I’m only following the prototype I model.
I didn’t really plan for roads when I did my track plan. I figured they be EZ enough to add them in later. Turns out it’s more of a problem then I thought it would be.[D)]
I have a small town with downtown streets and some rural roads as well. In the mid-50s there were a lot of neat cars. I enjoy it when someone my age notices a Studebaker or a Henry J. It starts some fun conversations. I planned all along to have roads.
