Downtown business parking (weekday)

[Cajonpassfan]

Not every car was black. It's just that most look black. In late 1940s, Chevy also offered 5 shades of dark green, plus some other dark colors, plus a tan called "Texas Ivory".  As years progressed into the 1950s, they added red, several other lighter/brighter colors and several 2 tone options.
http://chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com/models/paint4954.htm
http://chevy.oldcarmanualproject.com/models/paintcodes.htm

Now, finally, a useful piece of information on this thread
Don’t you guys have some modeling to do or something?
Thank you Tom!
Otto K.

[OldEastRR]

Not ALL cars were black, but as I was painting up these models I was doing all kinds of colors BUT black. Car makers didn't make jazzy bright colors for cars  in this period, but yes various dark greens (some almost Pullman Green) and dark browns, not that many light colors, these tended to be gray and cream-beige. I've got some Ford calendars from recent years which have various years of cars on the months, and found a ad poster for a hamburger chain also showing cars from the 20's through '80s.  But dark-colored cars were the norm up through the early '50s. I used Pennsy Maroon for one car and it looks like a brown of that era. Several other RR colors also are good matches for paint jobs.

[Cajonpassfan]

OldEast, I tend to agree that the diagonal parking makes the scene look cramped. I don’t know what part of the country you’re modeling, but the four and five story buildings would appear to me to represent a fairly important town with a substantial population. Perhaps parking in parallel would look better?
Pic below of San Bernardino, taken in the late 30’s, 1940 population about 43,000.
I do like the way the track is squeezed between the buildings. Reminds me of Colorado Blvd. in Pasadena.
Otto K.

[glakedylan]

small town Pennsylvania (pop. 5K-15K) and many larger burgs (15K-30K)
varied between main (business district) streets
that were:

(1) parallel parking on both sides
(2) diagonal parking 1 side, parallel parking1 side
(3) diagonal parking both sides


the critical thing seemed to be how many of the buildings in that area were shopping stores
the more stores, the more parking needed, business offices not so much
diagonal, of course, provides more spacer per town/city block


sincerely
Gary

[OldEastRR]

Yes, that's a good point --- how many of the stores on the street were for shoppers? Turns out, almost all of them. 



What I need to do is add the little signs that stuck out over the sidewalk on every store -- except sears had a huge storefront sign. I also have a small parking lot at the back of the Sears for people to pick up catalog merchandise they ordered.

I suppose I could cut down the sidewalk width to half size but 12' wide sidewalks really say DOWNTOWN. Another consideration is eastern cities grew up before the advent of mass auto use, while western cities tended to develop rapidly during the automobile age. Some older homes in Seattle had built-in garages under the house. Since this is a town in Massachusetts it's cramped. Might even have had streetcar line down the center.

I could also "tear down" the house next to the tracks and put a parking lot there. Jeez, this is like planning for a real city: "Where the fck does everybody park?" Another consideration is the normal thru-traffic load for this street. Turns out it's the state route that runs through the heart of the city, which means semis and tour buses travel on it.  And where are the stoplights???

It was a task to find "mid-sized" buildings for this scene. There are models like the DPM little town stores and the CMR monstrous NYC skyscrapers but not much in between. The bank is a Japanese model.

[wm3798]

I always heard "Caddy corner"...  But that's where I grew up.  You see, the guy that had the Lincoln was directly across the street...
Kitty Corner was a bar that didn't let you in until you were 21...

@OldEastRR , I'd suggest either reducing your sidewalks to 6 scale feet so your angle parking has a bit more elbow room, or change to parallel parking on at least one side.
In my adoptive home town, the streets are still fairly narrow, and we have parallel parking only on one side! (Yellow stripe is well off center to accommodate that... basically a three lane road with one parking lane and two travel lanes.)

Lee

[CRL]

My hometown in the photo, founded around 1900, had wide streets... not for parking cars, but so you could turn a horse drawn wagon around. Sections of the old concrete sidewalks still have iron rings to tie the horses to.

[OldEastRR]

I'll probably go with angle parking one side, parallel the other. I want to avoid that jammed in look "downtown" streets usually have on model layouts, where the builder crams as much track and RR structures in as possible but has streets way too narrow to handle the traffic flow all the structures generate. I tend to plan my streets and highways as logically as my track/structure placement.

[GimpLizard]

W. Main St. (Hwy 50), downtown Lake Geneva WI (Pop 7,962) 2018, or there abouts.
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Approximately the same location from the 1950's
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