Towns & Streets built on slopes - think Pittsburgh residential areas

Paul.....a good reference is Dennis Brennan's book......he has a whole section where he describes putting buildings going up a hill.

You can get it from Amazon.....it's a great reference and I refer to it all the time......

Peter

Also look st dunhsms custom layouts. They built an H.o. miseum layout for the Altoona Railrosd Museum and have an effective backdrop of housing on a slope.

Paul,

Your original statements about building "steps" is on the right track. Along with Peter's recommendation I believe you will find some great ideas to follow. I know when speaking of examples in Pittsburgh you will have extreme modeling of this. This type of engineering has always been very interesting and admittedly "mysterious" to me. I would imaging using foam stacked in blocks then carving them to the height and slope that you want. I can envision a notch in the center of these blocks for which you could add some steps that lead up to the homes way up there.  The options are all in your imagination but start with photos of what you want as a constant reference. This will show you the elevation from sidewalk to home. For example, if the home is on a steep hillside, has a vertical concrete wall in front of it, and all the other details to model.

Please keep us posted on this project as my interest is peaked.

Dave

I will agree Dennis Brennan’s book is an excellent reference. He’s an excellent modeler.

Thanks for the suggestions. I recall Dennis' example layout on a series of articles he did for CTT some years ago. His book sounds like a great reference.

Along the lines of installing buildings on slopes is building in tiers, something I have done and may fall back onto with my current project. Obviously, building in tiers is much easier, though still challenging nonetheless. It is a method look known to village and railroader modelers as a primary means to utilize 3-dimensional space to a maximum extent.

I did something for OGR on this a couple years ago.  I have better photos but finding them might be impossible.

Paul, my layout is set in the Pittsburgh/Southwestern Pa area and I faced a number of decisions on what to model. I was able to get a representation of the city, a scene in Castle Shannon near my parents first house, the elevated rail line that served the former PRR passenger station and the Mon River with a number of bridges. Modeling the South Side Slopes, across Carson Street and the tracks to the Mon was just impossible with the depth I had to work with. My layout is 30"deep, as much as 36" in two places, around the walls with a 6' wide center peninsula holding the freight and passenger yards, turntable and round house.

We determined using 3D Cad modeling that 5' was necessary to do a good representation of the slopes and not even include Carson Street. My layout is S gauge. It could be done easily in N gauge . In HO it would require a forced perspective approach to make it fit in a depth of 3'.

Below is a picture taken on the Carnegie Science Center layout of how they dealt with the Slopes. This scene is set in 1928 since the Liberty Bridge construction is nearing completion.

For those not familiar with the Slopes, several scenes in the movie Jack Reacher with Tom Cruise were filmed on the streets and in a house on the Slopes. The entire movie was filmed in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas.

@Putnam Division posted:

Paul.....a good reference is Dennis Brennan's book......he has a whole section where he describes putting buildings going up a hill.

You can get it from Amazon.....it's a great reference and I refer to it all the time......

Peter

A really neat booklet for Hi-Railers.  Brennan codified an experiment I was trying for road bead even a step better.

Ron

Paul, yours is a question I attempted to solve in N scale 30 to 35 years ago.  I was attempting to recreate an area in Butler, Pennsylvania which actually resembled what Dave did on his layout and wrote about in his OGR articles.  Alas, we had to move twice before I had it done, and I scrapped it on the second move, because I was going back to HO.  Now in O gauge, I want to do something similar in a corner of my current layout.  I think I am going to have to build in tiers.  When standing in downtown Butler, as with so many towns in the region, and looking at the hillsides, the houses look like they are tiered on on top of the other.  We now live in the house my wife's grandparents had built, which is 300 feet elevation higher than the bottom.  It does look like the road goes straight up when standing at the bottom.

I really need to get over to the Altoona Museum as prrhorseshoecurve suggested.

Putnam Division Peter, I did not know the Dennis Brennan book even existed.  I will have to look for a copy.

AmFlyer Tom, it has been a few years since I was at Carnegie Science Center layout.  It is great.

You might find these useful. About an 8” height difference from lowest to highest building.

Winding road

You see the height difference in just the last 2 row house white/green(?) on the right.

@Paul Kallus posted:

Thanks for the suggestions. I recall Dennis' example layout on a series of articles he did for CTT some years ago. His book sounds like a great reference.

Along the lines of installing buildings on slopes is building in tiers, something I have done and may fall back onto with my current project. Obviously, building in tiers is much easier, though still challenging nonetheless. It is a method look known to village and railroader modelers as a primary means to utilize 3-dimensional space to a maximum extent.

I believe Dennis' approach is stacking foam and then sculpting additional foam into an inclined road.....I will email him so he notices this thread....

Peter

At the risk of heresy, this sort of question is really beyond 'scale'.  IMHO, the HOrdes of modelers in the 'Dark Side' () of model railroading have also dealt with this terrain issue!...successfully, I might add.

Think George Sellios' Franklin and South Manchester layout, as one of the more famous in this scenic genre of  urban terrain...

C'mon, HONGZ-ers!  Throw out some names...builders and layouts...of the many in your scale camps that, while not participating in this forum, perhaps, might provide searchable fodder for the OP.

Meanwhile, back at the O/S ranch...  I seem to recall some photos of Norm Charbonneau's (sp?) gorgeous layout featuring company houses along an hilly street?

And, BTW...  Another vote cast for John Brennan's book!  I snapped that up back when it was first published by Kalmbach.  Well-worn, now!  Full of 'pearls' of wisdom...like his harbor scene!

Excellent topic, though!!  It is one of the more challenging arrangements of structures/scenery, for sure.

KD   

One note- playing with the size and height of the buildings can accentuate the rise.  
in this case we where looking at the Montrose building and the small building to the right to see what worked better visually.

The Montrose building was the right building for the location, at the cost of not accentuating the rise..

unfortunately, not great pictures.

Great photos posted, I appreciate you all sharing them and your experiences. I am thinking this kind of modeling falls into the realm of master model railroading, or close to it.

As I see it, incorporating the structures (without cutting them) is to use sloped front yards sandwiched between the street/sidewalk and the structure. Bushes/foilage could then be used to camouflage the joints. However, I am not confident my skills are good enough to even accomplish this.

It was while watching the Showtime series "American Rust" during a free trial weekend of that channel that I got a shot of inspiration to re-visit this project idea for my new city area. While that show takes place in a fictional western PA town it could be any number of places. The story line is emblematic of the tragedy what has befallen the American way of life the last 40 years. The tavern under the bridge got my juices flowing

Here in eastern PA we also have towns built into hillsides and mountains - in fact just visited my in-laws in Boyertown, PA yesterday - a nice little town with neat late 19th and early 20th century masonry structures built on slopes. Roxborough and Jim Thorpe come to mind as well. These places have copious amounts of character.

@Paul Kallus posted:

I am trying to figure how to install my pre-built structures on a sloped street - it is not as easy as I thought, at least not easy to make it look "good." It can be done with retaining walls and building in "steps" for both the structure and sidewalks with a continuous sloped street but my drawings are not what I want to achieve. If you've ever seen residential areas in Pittsburgh you know what I am trying to model. I dare say this project is in the realm of advanced model railroading scenery. If anyone has done this can you share pictures and methods, please?

Paul,

Although it's been on (temporary) hold, I am also modeling this type of scenery.  In fact, I am modeling Dave's (luvindemtrains) grandmother's neighborhood in Steubenville, OH.

Below is a diagram of the hill (cross-section) that shows the streets, buildings, and terrain.  It might be helpful.  Be warned - it's my 10th version of the drawing and I have not yet built the hillside itself (apart from some basic foam to get it a roughly correct elevation).  There are 3 types of HO houses on that hillside with 3 types of stairs and respective changes in slope.  Tricky!

You can see the relevant section starting around page 29 of the PRR Panhandle 2.0 thread (Photos & Videos sub-forum).

Best of luck!

George

Here are a couple that I took of an O-scale 2-rail layout in MA.  Click on a photo for a larger version.

Paul it depends on what type of structures and what you're trying to accomplish.  "Downtown", where side walks abut building fronts, or sides, you'll have to build a foundation under your builtup models and control the slope of the street so that the exposed part of the foundation on the downhill side look good to your eye.  Dave has accomplished this in his photos.  Note the front of the General Store and the side of the yellowish MTH Bank.  More often than not house lots may be leveled by using a terrace method, as seen in George's pictures, or in extreme cases retaining walls.  I had a cousin who's house was on a very steep street, also with a serious front to back rise in topography.  The garage was located in the basement.  Front door on the uphill corner was two steps up from the sidewalk.  Driveway down from street level, was protected by retaining walls on either side of differing heights as the slope of the street required.  Foundation, basement, wall with windows exposed on the downhill side.  The backyard was protected by a serious retaining wall across the back of the property and on the uphill side from the back of the next house to the rear retaining wall.

Thanks for the recomendations for my book. And yes, I do show how I created the hillside using construction foam and Fomecore and scenery. You can order "Realistic Modeling for Toy Trains: A Hi-Rail Guide" through Kalmbach or you can order a personally autographed copy from me on my website.

Dennis Brennan

What about using different scale buildings as you move uphill to force perspective?  You might be able to achieve the look you are going for in less horizontal space.  An idea occurred to me, in the age of 3D printing, we're no long restricted to certain scales.  Just print each building a little smaller than the one in front of it.  I realize that doing this starting with full O-scale is probably time and cost prohibitive.  You'd need to start small and go even smaller.  Maybe an idea for the furthest background of your hillside. 

@Cheap&NothingWasted posted:

What about using different scale buildings as you move uphill to force perspective?  You might be able to achieve the look you are going for in less horizontal space.  An idea occurred to me, in the age of 3D printing, we're no long restricted to certain scales.  Just print each building a little smaller than the one in front of it.  I realize that doing this starting with full O-scale is probably time and cost prohibitive.  You'd need to start small and go even smaller.  Maybe an idea for the furthest background of your hillside.

In my "Highland and Superior" neighborhood, the houses are all HO structures.  I think it works well.

George

Vance Junction, from a kit by Banta Modelworks, is built on a slope at a corner of my model railroad. The first two photos show how it appears on the layout. Extruded pink foam was stacked in layers that were carved into a slope with a rectangular cutout into which the building was fitted. The last two photos show the structure itself. This approach was possible because the structure has a full lower level. I use differing terrain elevations throughout my layouts (from extruded pink foam) to make the scenery look realistic but usually position buildings on flat parts of the surface.

MELGAR

Mel that building was a perfect candidate for your application.  A full lower level with stairs  to a door on the second level allowing any degree of slope one wants.

Excellent example, Mel!

Another awesome model and placement!

But, Mel!...  Call me 'Sheldon or Monk'...or, whatever...but please add a small fence or some such protection for folks coming out of that basement door or off the bottom of that staircase!  Mercy, that can't be code compliant!

...

@dkdkrd posted:

Another awesome model and placement!

But, Mel!...please add a small fence or some such protection for folks coming out of that basement door or off the bottom of that staircase

...

dkdkrd,

No fence or sidewalk - A consequence of a slightly-too-big model for the available space.

MELGAR

@MELGAR posted:

dkdkrd,

No fence or sidewalk - A consequence of a slightly-too-big model for the available space.

MELGAR

That is awesome.

@Mark Boyce posted:

Putnam Division Peter, I did not know the Dennis Brennan book even existed.  I will have to look for a copy.

Hi Mark,

Let me see if I can find my copy, and you can use it. It may not be that hard for me to find. I'll let you know. He did a kit bash on the Atlas tower to use it for a bascule bridge house. I was planning on doing the same if I ever get to that point. lol Probably two years away for that point.

John

@Aegis21 posted:

Hi Mark,

Let me see if I can find my copy, and you can use it. It may not be that hard for me to find. I'll let you know. He did a kit bash on the Atlas tower to use it for a bascule bridge house. I was planning on doing the same if I ever get to that point. lol Probably two years away for that point.

John

John, thank you.  I did not order one yet.