I have been working lately on my N scale layout and the thought that keeps coming to mind is, what do I want or need to make my layout look like a realistic city.
I know from asking a similar question to a friend about what criteria makes a town a town and the reply I received was, it needs to have a church to be designate as a city or town.
So my question that I am asking is, what buildings or items do I need to justify my little town a town.
What I plan on having in the town (no railroad access):
What do you need to have a ‘real’ town? A post office!
Granted that the USPS is trying to get out of the retail mail business today. Back when, a place became a recognized town when the Post Office Department appointed a local Postmaster - and frequently identified the place with that person’s name.
Absolute minimum town, South Dakota style. Four buildings. Two nice homes on diagonally opposed lots at a crossroads. A third corner would be a gas station, owned by one homeowner. The other corner was the site of the general store, with an apartment or two upstairs. The Postmistress, the storekeeper’s wife, would run the post office - a lean-to against one side of the store with easy street and parking access. The other homeowner would be the local wheat baron.
So, how about a larger town? A fire hall, a cop shop and some kind of municipal offices. A court house would be reserved for the county seat. The first church would come when enough people decided they wouldn’t run the preacher out of town.
I’d have a restaurant or two atmost, a building row with multiple stores, maybe a RR station, a post office for sure now that I think about it, and probably an industry or two for the trains to pick up and drop stuff off at. my best guess is that I’d model the town of Centralia, Wa. it has a yard and an interchange between the PSAP and the BNSF/UP.
for a small town that has no form of railroad attachment other than tracks going through or nearby, would be tenino or Bucoda Washington. this is just western washington though.
Chuck has given a couple of good thoughts. Also, much will depend on era. For much of the 20th century, a town would have a grocery/general store/company store, depending on how the town grew up; a gas station or two; Post Office; perhaps a small bank (banks were in walking distance); drug store (with a genuine soda fountain); and a café selling plate lunches and the best hot dogs “all the way” in the world. Perhaps a fuel dealer or five (back when there was real competition in the oil business a town of just a couple thousand people might have Standard, Texaco, Gulf, Sinclair, Phillips, and another Standard brand all competing for the fuel oil and gas station business); a lumber yard and a feed store.
Way back in the Aug 77 MR, if you can find it, there was a pretty good article on how to model the difference between towns and cities.
Why the town exists informs what buildings more than anything else.
And, really, not everything is clustered around the tracks. Remember, that was an unappealing place to live and industrial clients staked out that real estate more than commercial and residential.
This is Bucoda Wa. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unq1nVSX01U in the left side of the video that whole area is full of houses that are trackside, where I’m walking in the beginning is the park and behind me is the fire department building.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLhQ8Xfgv4s in this vid you see the park just on the other side of the fence is a 3 track probably a passing siding for Main 1 they have some piggyback flatcars stored there.
Are you modelling a town or modelling a railroad? If the latter, then the structures you would most likely want on your layout are those found within 1/4 mile of the tracks - you don’t need to have a complete town.
Putting an entire “town” on a layout means it has to be a real Podunk place or you are just modeling the main crossroads of the town.
A lot of what is there depends on the era and the region. East coast there is probably a restaurant/hotel/post office and lumber yard/general store/coal dealer plus a gas station in the more modern era.
Western regions will have a feed store/coop, a restaurant and a gas station with a post office.
Throw in a hardware store in either case or a barber shop.
A theater would have to be a fairly substantial town, maybe the county seat, which would be much larger.
I am modeling the downtown portion with rows of apartments and mom and pops stores lining the street that leads to the far left side of my layout that has a few industries and non railroad access businesses (small hardware store, candy store, etc.)
Sorry if you cannot see it, I am drawing the layout design over and didn’t have time to finish it. From bottom to the top: quarry, EAF mini mill, lumber complex (charcoal and cooperage included), Brick factory, downtown, auto garage on the right side, the concrete factory with the circles, the little inlet harbor is the harbor, the train yard with the ladder, the building to the left of the freight yard is first a warehouse, across from the warehouse is the post office warehouse, the building north of the post office warehouse is an unknown building, north of that is another industry. the buildings north center are apartments and businesses.
Note: I already know this is not to scale and I know I will have space for more or less things to add to my layout.
Yes I know alot of non-model railroad stuff. I have been busy getting my car repair and running without a lot of noise, but yeah this is what my layout is going to be on when it’s finished.
I know. I do not have room for single family homes, so I’m going to have apartments instead to maximize my space for people to live. The look of the buildings will have that same grimmy looking appearance like the Downtown Deco buildings.
Once i am in my new house, i will have single home flats and the entire layout will be built on foam except for the harbor and quarry
A Police Station, 2 Restaurants A church with Rectory A Synagogue An Apartment Building A gas Station and a post office in my small downtown area. I am not trying to model everything.
However one end of downtown has a walkway to access the Railroad area with the 2 industries an oil dealership and a freight transfer station and other RR buildings including a passenger station.
I am developing a very small town based on a single business - a saw mill. There is the mill, a few houses and trailers, a gas station/bait shop, a general store/post office and a ‘restaurant.’ It’s actually based on a very small town in the Michigan UP which only had those buildings. Sad to say, when the mill closed, the actual town fell on very hard times - the restaurant has closed, the gas station burned down and many people have found other jobs stringing snow shoes.
