Warning! Highly graphic intense.
http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=142692
One of the members of a U.K moddeling forum found this, thought i’d pass it on.
Fassinating stuff.
Beautiful. Thank you!
Tom
Remarkable. Scroll down to the Dallas shots for a good shot of standard 40’ box cars
Dave Nelson
What I noticed first in the Dallas photo was the sky - not a single cloud in the photo…now I have a prototype to justify no clouds on my backdrop!! [C):-)]
Don Z.
Indeed, a useful resource, although few modelers actually include representations of truly major cities on their layouts, except maybe as background flats. I feel an even more valuable reference has been the B&W and color scenes, still and motion pictures, of typical middle-sized U.S. cities, circa 1939-1943, that have been appearing so far on Ken Burns’ great documentary “The War”, currently running on PBS. Streets filled with 2, 3, and 4-story buildings look almost like exquisitely modeled layout scenes. For us Northeasterners, the shots of the industrial city of Waterbury, CT, during the war are particularly fascinating and truly enlightening.
Something one notices immediately from either of these two sources is the lack of broad neighborhoods or areas of terribly rundown structures and infrastructure. Even though the earliest Ken Burns’ urban images are from the closing days of The Great Depression, one sees no indication (beyond a few individual buildings) of the absurdly caricaturish dilapidation, filth and urban decay so loved and taken as representing reality by many less accurate, naive hobbyists today.
Something “The War” particularly illustrates is the huge use of building awnings in the 1930’s and 40’s, not only shading commercial establishments on the ground floor but in use on the upper stories as well. These were the days before widespread air-conditioning. Likewise, the broad use of hanging business signs in the commercial sections of the cities is quite striking and rarely seen well modeled. While I personally grew up during this era, I had almost forgotten how commonplace both of these were in urban America until watching this series jogged my memory.
CNJ831
Here’s another source of old pictures and films. If you have a high speed connection some of the movies are definitely woth downloading for views of the cities in the '20s through the '50s.
http://www.archive.org/index.php
Tom
Oh, man, I’d give my left…well, you know…for some of those signs. Those pictures really speak to me since I’m old enough to remember how cities looked in the early 50’s. It shows what we’ve lost. We’ve gone from vibrant downtowns that had an explosion of different type of buildings, architecture, and signage to a sterile bunch of boxes that all look alike (or are bizzare) and downtowns that are deserted by 6 pm.
I also agree about some of the layout pictures I’ve seen, the Franklin and Manchester being a prime example. Great modeling skills that produced city scenes that never looked like that. I grew up in Cleveland, not recognized as one of the garden spots of the nation. [:)] Even in the “bad” parts of downtown, it wasn’t littered with garbage and discarded junk everywhere. Storekeepers swept the sidewalks and the cities still used street cleaners to keep things reasonably neat. Downtown San Francisco today is much dirtier and filth-strewn than anything I ever saw in Cleveland what I was young.
These are really great — thanks so much for posting them!
I looked particuarly closely at the New York city ones (I live there). None of them are dated, but it appears the first seven are from the 40s — either early 40s or late 40s. Hard to tell which. Help!,somebody who knows 40s cars — take a good look at that blue Plymouth (or Dodge?) sedan in the 7th New York photo ---- is that a pre or post WWII model? Then there’s a clear abrupt shift to about 1960 for the remaining photos.
Wow! Thanks again