They must have had a lot of sidewalks there!
Lee
Your town would seem to have been subject to echoes.
Mark
Norman:
As the general consensus suggests, steam roads ballasted yards and secondary tracks with cinders, which allowed water to drain down and away from the tracks (you sometimes came across little streams and culverts in some yards for this purpose), while main line trackage was graded to be higher than the surrounding terrain, with gravel ballast tamped well to keep the tracks in place–and usually had ditches running parallel to carry runoff to streams that ran through the grade in culverts. In steam days there were usually cinders that had fallen from ash bins mixed with the rock ballast between the rails. Cinders were fairly “sturdy,” and if well and deeply layered lasted for decades after the demise of steam.
Most rock ballast was gray, but a lot of it was white limestone–and shades could vary on the same line, depending upon the distances from the quarries that produced it. A couple of railroads, the C&NW for one, used a sort of pink ballast that looked rather playful to eyes used to greys and whites!
A lot depends upon what era you’re modeling, and I haven’t traveled around enough since the '50s and '60s to know what’s been used since the end of steam. Have fun!
Dean-58
Duluth, MN