Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[Green_Elite_Cab]

I forgot, get a truck with a long trailer. You will have a tendency to make all roads far to narrow

I third that! When I was originally planning my layout, it did not occur to me how big a tractor trailer REALLY was. The issue in my case was not really roads, (a two lane road is about 3.5 inches in HO), but the truck docks. On my original layout incarnation, if the truck was backed to the loading dock, the tractor end was right at the fence line of an adjacent structure!

It is important to have some of these around to figure realistic sizes. You can also try measuring real life locations with the Google Earth ruler tool (in the program, not the website), to get a better idea what the spaces should be.

Observe, my layout June 2007. I had just recently purchased a tractor trailer and finally realized that no truck would ever fit into that space (though I did find a small athearn box truck sold with American Hardware Supply logos on it that could have fit). This was about the time i figured that squeezing a small portion of an oil refinery into my layout was also a bad idea. Getting rid of that would not only be more realistic track/train wise, but would open up some more room for trucks.



I removed the walthers fence i had started, and lifted the buildings off the layout. You can still see where i weathered the road differently, but i figured it would be alright.



I know you're set, but again, don't worry about things being perfect. Changes like this happen on all layouts, not matter how experienced. The more you see, the less you know, and there will always be something you can do differently to be more realistic.