Conrail Windsor St Yard (York PA) Engineering Report

[DKS]

Ok. I'm gonna say it. Modeling populated areas sucks.

And modeling populated areas surrounded by tracks sucks even ops.

I'm currently fighting my layout.

Please explain. What is it about modeling populated areas that sucks, specifically?

[Cajonpassfan]

Ed, adding people is easy, take a look at some photos from the town on my old layout. It makes the scene way more interesting and brings it to life.

I don't think that adding population is the problem; it's building the "populated areas".
A few square feet of believable urban modeling can eat you alive. Ask me how I know
Otto K.

[sirenwerks]

York's a fickle mistress, considering the area you are modeling was more densely "populated" than it is now. And by populated I mean active, with more trains, more people, more vehicles. Now that area's a ghost burg even during the day.

[lashedup]

Lance Mindheim mentioned that trying to model the city of Bloomington was the final straw in his n scale layout before he pivoted a bit to HO switching. His realization of the amount of time it was going to take to essentially fill what was such a small part of his layout wasn’t fitting in with his original time frame and expectations.

The point isn’t to discourage you as I think we all go through ups, downs and attention span issues with this hobby.  But more that urban scenery is just time consuming and it’s good to take breaks and tackle other things to clear the head.

[seusscaboose]

There's always O Scale

[Philip H]

Ok. I'm gonna say it. Modeling populated areas sucks.

And modeling populated areas surrounded by tracks sucks even ops.

I'm currently fighting my layout.

Since we didn't have the chance to get into this yesterday - I think you may be over thinking it.  from a Project Management standpoint you aren't really modeling a populated area surrounded by tracks.  what you are doing is aggregating a series or set of modeling activities, all of which need their own unique tweaks to be successful.  to wit:

• Modeling the railroad (Road bed, track, ballast, signalling)
• Modeling the landforms
• Modeling the buildings built on the landforms filling in the area
• Modeling the non-rail transportation network filling in between the buildings, landforms and railroad (roads, sidewalks, cars, trucks)
• Modeling the people who inhabit this multi-tiered landscape.  I would add that the people need not be abundant depending on time of day wand weather

I'm not saying its not a slog, but don't let it get the best of you.  and when in doubt JFRTM!

[nuno81291]

Just build a few trees every night 

When aren’t we fighting with our layouts?

Slow and steady works for urban areas; York seems to have shaped up quite a bit there.

[packers#1]

Just build a few trees every night 

Since it's an urban area, wouldn't it more be just painting a few windows every night?   

But seriously, layout slogs can be tough. Just set up jobs when you can and eventually you'll break through

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Thanks for the encouragement guys.

I think, at this point, I'm going to do what's been suggested. Make progress on what I can and make the rest inoffensive.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Please explain. What is it about modeling populated areas that sucks, specifically?

1. It's unforgiving. Unlike the country, where you can just throw down miles of trees and brush, every square inch has to "make sense".
2. It's labor intensive. I can make a blocks worth of trees in an evening, but a block of buildings takes lots of work (and expense).
3. In order to do it well, you need a lot of stuff and a lot of variety. The selection of urban style buildings for towns like York aren't great, and what's available has typically been "done to death". I could just go buy one of everything from DPM, but then York will look like "DPM Town" and that's just not gonna do it for me. The solution, then, is scratch building and kitbashing, but that takes even more time and effort.
4. This is somewhat unique to my own situation, but, the geometry of what I've got planned makes precision important. Since each cross road connects with each side of the penninsula, and the one stretch is very visible street running, I don't have a lot of wiggle room. For example, I have to get the angle of the sidewalk joint perfect on one side, otherwise the other end of it won't end up in the right place with regards to the start of the street running.

Maybe I've just got my standards set too high, but at least, for now, I'm just going to keep plowing ahead.

[DeltaBravo]

Head down, and place on foot in front of the other, you will get there, eventually.

[C855B]

It doesn't help your particular vision, of course, but in my planning I intentionally skipped city areas due to the kind of modeling intensity you're talking about. Plus it's tougher for you because you are (...naturally...) modeling dense Eastern locales. I'll probably have a couple of street scenes by the time all is said and done, but they'll be tertiary to the railroad, which takes more real estate out West anyway.

Think in terms of my skipping downtown Las Vegas even though my modeled line goes right through the middle of it. Otherwise I'd have to hire @peteski for four or five years to wire the millions of micro LEDs.

[conrail98]

If you're worried about expense and time, look at cardstock buildings. The Harrisburg Terminal Railroad, which I know you've seen many pictures of, has a ton of cardstock buildings and you probably couldn't tell the difference looking at pictures. In person, operating, I can't tell the difference unless I know it was a cardstock building because the owner did a thread or post somewhere describing how he built it,

Phil

[peteski]

Think in terms of my skipping downtown Las Vegas even though my modeled line goes right through the middle of it. Otherwise I'd have to hire @peteski for four or five years to wire the millions of micro LEDs.

   Yeah, and I need another project like I need a blown=up tantalum cap! 

[Cajonpassfan]

  Yeah, and I need another project like I need a blown=up tantalum cap! 

Lol Peteski,  that is funny, I like that! Is that an old Polish saying...?
Otto