The suburbs, part 1

Part of my personal history around trains involves riding the MBTA commuter rail when I was in college.  I'd like to recreate a part of that on my layout, and I have enough room for a small neighborhood with a grade crossing and the hint of a small commuter rail stop.  It took a while to decide how to lay things out, and like other times, at some point I realized it didn't need to be a big decision and it was time to just do something.

I started by roughly laying out where some houses might go, and how much space they'd need.  I've kept the roads at two-lanes, 4 inches wide, so far.  These aren't supposed to be major thoroughfares.  No room for on-street parking for anyone, but sometimes you have to selectively compress things to make it work.  I don't foresee any of these folks having very big yards either.  It will allow me to model some of these things from the rear - much of what you see on a train is the back of things.

So far I've poured most of the roads with Woodland Scenics Smooth-It plaster and foam tape.  For the grade crossing I used some advice from YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1CG6t_dUSlI) by first building it up with some old cork roadbed, then next with some spackle.  I'll see if I can build up the rest with plaster.  Based on the grade crossings around here, I need to get some small pieces of balsa wood to use along the rails.

In terms of planning going ahead - it's frustrating to see how few available kits there are for residential houses.  For the density I'd prefer, it would get pretty expensive too.  I bought one so far that should be alright for an old house in a modern setting, we'll see how it goes.

Lessons learned:

1. I've found that I don't really like working with plaster. I keep thinking I'm doing something wrong.  I thought I mixed these batches better than I did last time I was pouring roads, but it's still hard to get it to pour and move smoothly.  Based on how much sanding I had to do last time, I plan to buy a small power hand sander.
2. I used some of that spackle to build up a gradual incline to the crossing level (not shown in these photos yet).  We'll see how well it dries.