I’m putting a town into my 4 x 8 N scale layout. How wide should my road be - in inches?
This is a small down town in Wisconsin, with one lane in each direction and one parking lane in each direction. If someone knows or can suggest, in inches, how wide this road should be I’d appreciate it.
Thanks
dmckinney55- Welcome to Trains.com! [C):-)]
2-1/2 inches would work. That would be a 3/4" (10 scale foot) travel lane for each direction and two 1/2" (6.7 scale foot) parking lanes. If you add curb, gutter and sidewalk, I suggest, you use 1/2" (6.7 foot) for downtown. Older residential areas might have a 1/4" (3.3 foot) concrete sidewalk separated from the curb by a 1/4" wide planting strip. Newer residential (1960’s +) would probably not have the planting strip.
These dimensions are whitin the range of prototype streets, although probably a little narrower than most streets (which might be 12’ travel lanes, 8’ parking lanes, 8’-10’ downtown sidewalks, 4’ residential sidewalks). They should look reasonable without overwelming the rest of the scenery and the trains.
Welcome to the forums.
Good general information above, but take four vehicles and set them side by side and see how they look. Some folks have thought some adjustment to true scale measurements look better. Many older towns had the facing houses further apart with large lawns in front of them. This has allowed the towns to have wider streets. Then there are towns with limited space and roads are barely wide enough to drive through without touching mirrors. I’ve driven through both.
Have fun,
Richard
Set two N cars side by side so they look about right. Now do the same for the parked cars. Measure. I have brought up this method in another forum post of same subject. Number of modelers chimed in saying they use this method so I assume it is a common method.
Take note of the parking though. Parking parallel to main road will take up less room than those a skew from main road.
If you have a specific town look you want to base the layout on, you can also use Google Earth and get a measurement in inches on how wide the street is and then divide that by 160 (N Scale 1:160). For the street in front of my house it is ~372 inches across so that would be 2.325 inches in N Scale.
I just looked at a book published in 1951. It gives the following dimensions for a “typical” two lane street with parallel parking. 34 feet between curbs consisting of two 9-foot wide travel lanes and two 8-foot wide parking lanes. Each parking space is 20 feet long. Angled parking would require 18 feet outside the travel lane (It does not matter what the angle is: 90 degree, 60 degree, 45 degree, 30 degree). Angled stalls are 8-foot wide. Angled parking is common in business areas because it accomodates more parked cars per length of street and parking manuvers are less disruptive to through traffic. Most business streets would probably have travel lanes wider than 9 feet.