Roadways with two buildings more like.

@Maxbricks14 said:
"Roadways with two buildings more like."

And some seasonally-appropriate crumble-trees...which will shed their foliage over time.

@Bart_66 said:
"I remember drooling over this set in the catalog more than 50 years ago. But never had it."
Just seen it advertised for £90 - £215 on BrickLink... Rather chuffed to have got it for £20 on eBay!

I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention or what, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen baseplates with corners that rounded. And people say Lego cuts corners *now.*

@TheOtherMike said:
"I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention or what, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen baseplates with corners that rounded. And people say Lego cuts corners *now.*"

I got a blue one from Gary Istok that I believe was this one:

https://www.bricklink.com/v2/catalog/catalogitem.page?P=785T=C

@TheOtherMike said:
"I don't know if I just haven't been paying attention or what, but I'm not sure if I've ever seen baseplates with corners that rounded. And people say Lego cuts corners *now.*"
Most (maybe all) of the dotted baseplates had rounded corners

I dunno, a large but hollow warehousey building, a crane and a small house seems more like we’re looking at out in the sticks rather than a town centre. This feels more like a docks or industrial park than an urban centre

Bit weird but cool set! And it still surprises me how old those traffic signs actually are.

Big question is: Are those cardboard roadways better or worse than road plates? I have a feeling not that many will have survived....

Looking at the parking spaces, there's indicators of which spots are for cars and which are for trucks, but at first I thought they were little oil spills, which felt kind of appropriate. It was an odd level of detail to include, but I guess that's not what was intended.

I remember being given this set either one Christmas or birthday. It was not obvious that the roadway came folded and was stored inside the lid of the box. you could by the roads separately, so I was also given the road base. It must have been a year or more before I discovered the road base tucked a\way in the box lid.

@WizardOfOss said:
"Big question is: Are those cardboard roadways better or worse than road plates? I have a feeling not that many will have survived...."
Certainly much better than I'd expect a 50+ year old bit of cardboard to be but mine, along with the bricks, appear to have had very little use. I suspect they'd normally have been lucky to survive for more than a week!

TIL why old baseplates had rounded corners. Very interesting system! I guess they switched to square ones again because these weren't great when put next to each other due to the corners being awkwardly rounded (I say again because earlier there were those brick-thick rectangular plates).

@MCLegoboy said:
"Looking at the parking spaces, there's indicators of which spots are for cars and which are for trucks, but at first I thought they were little oil spills, which felt kind of appropriate. It was an odd level of detail to include, but I guess that's not what was intended."

We have a member in my club who is working on building all of Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, and the road surfaces have extensive trails of little black dots that are meant to represent the oil dripping from their Model T fleet.

@PurpleDave said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"Looking at the parking spaces, there's indicators of which spots are for cars and which are for trucks, but at first I thought they were little oil spills, which felt kind of appropriate. It was an odd level of detail to include, but I guess that's not what was intended."

We have a member in my club who is working on building all of Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, and the road surfaces have extensive trails of little black dots that are meant to represent the oil dripping from their Model T fleet."

I'm reminded of a bumper sticker I saw on a Beetle once. "Old VWs don't leak oil, they mark their spot."

@TheOtherMike said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @MCLegoboy said:
"Looking at the parking spaces, there's indicators of which spots are for cars and which are for trucks, but at first I thought they were little oil spills, which felt kind of appropriate. It was an odd level of detail to include, but I guess that's not what was intended."

We have a member in my club who is working on building all of Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, and the road surfaces have extensive trails of little black dots that are meant to represent the oil dripping from their Model T fleet."

I'm reminded of a bumper sticker I saw on a Beetle once. "Old VWs don't leak oil, they mark their spot.""

"If there ain't no oil under 'em, there ain't no oil in 'em."
- Mater

Spealing for my self, one of the best things that happened to Lego was when the launched the road plates and the mini figures (both in the same year)

Rather confusingly it's actually a playmat with no studs, and three building base plates, but this was before 32x32 road baseplates existed so forgiven.

@LegoStevieG said:
"Spealing for my self, one of the best things that happened to Lego was when the launched the road plates and the mini figures (both in the same year) "

Agree - it was always a pain that there were never enough straight roads for what I wanted to build - I think you got 1 straight and 1 cross roads in one pack and 1 bend and 1 T junction in another pack...

@danieltheo said:
" @LegoStevieG said:
"Spealing for my self, one of the best things that happened to Lego was when the launched the road plates and the mini figures (both in the same year) "

Agree - it was always a pain that there were never enough straight roads for what I wanted to build - I think you got 1 straight and 1 cross roads in one pack and 1 bend and 1 T junction in another pack..."

We had a massive problem with that in my club until I figured out a neat trick. We use the last version of roadplates, on dark-bley, with 6-stud medians, but we line the sides with 7-stud sidewalks that cover up the outer lane lines (because you’d never see those next to a hard curb anyways, plus we needed a bit more width on the sidewalks anyways). Because the sidewalks hide those lines, we started using the abundance of four-way intersections for both what they were intended for and for our T intersections (which gives them three crosswalks instead of just one). Then all the T-intersections got turned into straight roads by just making sidewalks that span the full width of the crosswalk side. Between the four roadplates and this cheat, we were able to achieve a mix that better suits our club’s specific needs, where upwards of 2/3rds of the roads on a given layout need to be basic straights.

BTW, they did switch up the pairings at one point, and we got most of our supply through 7280/7281, before they swapped pairings for 60236/60237.

@PurpleDave said:
" @danieltheo said:
" @LegoStevieG said:
"Spealing for my self, one of the best things that happened to Lego was when the launched the road plates and the mini figures (both in the same year) "

Agree - it was always a pain that there were never enough straight roads for what I wanted to build - I think you got 1 straight and 1 cross roads in one pack and 1 bend and 1 T junction in another pack..."

We had a massive problem with that in my club until I figured out a neat trick. We use the last version of roadplates, on dark-bley, with 6-stud medians, but we line the sides with 7-stud sidewalks that cover up the outer lane lines (because you’d never see those next to a hard curb anyways, plus we needed a bit more width on the sidewalks anyways). Because the sidewalks hide those lines, we started using the abundance of four-way intersections for both what they were intended for and for our T intersections (which gives them three crosswalks instead of just one). Then all the T-intersections got turned into straight roads by just making sidewalks that span the full width of the crosswalk side. Between the four roadplates and this cheat, we were able to achieve a mix that better suits our club’s specific needs, where upwards of 2/3rds of the roads on a given layout need to be basic straights.

BTW, they did switch up the pairings at one point, and we got most of our supply through 7280/7281, before they swapped pairings for 60236/60237."

When the original road plates came out in 1978 you got 2 of the same in a pack, if memory serves me right the first year only had, straights, curves and t junctions, cross roads came later

@LegoStevieG said:
"When the original road plates came out in 1978 you got 2 of the same in a pack, if memory serves me right the first year only had, straights, curves and t junctions, cross roads came later"

Our club didn’t form until 2000, and we didn’t start investing heavily in the dark-bley roads until sometime between 2005-2010, when we had club funds from doing shows that we could invest in improved infrastructure for layouts. By then the road surfaces were no longer painted on (which means the color is more durable), and the roads themselves were at least four studs wider. But, again, we trimmed them back two studs to get rid of the outer lane lines and increase the width of the sidewalk. That last part was especially important when we switched from tiny molded trees to our current design, which uses about 30 of the large 5x7 leaf pieces. Even with that extra stud of sidewalk, we sometimes have trees pressed right up against the buildings behind them. And we lose three studs to the planters they sit in, which means there’s only four studs clearance between the planters and most buildings. But the flip side is that we can’t make the roads any more narrow because most of the time they’re full of 6-wide cars, and a few 8-wides. As it is, there’s just barely enough room for Lightning McQueen (8-wide) to sit next to Mater (6-wide) at an intersection, watching Grem and Acer chase Rod “Torque” Redline with a missile launcher and a cutting torch.

Anyways, as it stands, the 2005 mix of road plates worked out great for us. We effectively turned those into straight/intersection or straight/curve packs, and we got to pick our mix of three-way vs four-way intersections. If we’d waited, we would have ended up with tons of curves we couldn’t use, or our T intersections would all be missing two crosswalks.

@LegoStevieG said:
" @PurpleDave said:
" @danieltheo said:
" @LegoStevieG said:
"Spealing for my self, one of the best things that happened to Lego was when the launched the road plates and the mini figures (both in the same year) "

Agree - it was always a pain that there were never enough straight roads for what I wanted to build - I think you got 1 straight and 1 cross roads in one pack and 1 bend and 1 T junction in another pack..."

We had a massive problem with that in my club until I figured out a neat trick. We use the last version of roadplates, on dark-bley, with 6-stud medians, but we line the sides with 7-stud sidewalks that cover up the outer lane lines (because you’d never see those next to a hard curb anyways, plus we needed a bit more width on the sidewalks anyways). Because the sidewalks hide those lines, we started using the abundance of four-way intersections for both what they were intended for and for our T intersections (which gives them three crosswalks instead of just one). Then all the T-intersections got turned into straight roads by just making sidewalks that span the full width of the crosswalk side. Between the four roadplates and this cheat, we were able to achieve a mix that better suits our club’s specific needs, where upwards of 2/3rds of the roads on a given layout need to be basic straights.

BTW, they did switch up the pairings at one point, and we got most of our supply through 7280 / 7281 , before they swapped pairings for 60236 / 60237 ."

When the original road plates came out in 1978 you got 2 of the same in a pack, if memory serves me right the first year only had, straights, curves and t junctions, cross roads came later"

Yes, and I believe the t junctions were only through shop @home , at least initially. I know I had a pair of straights, a pair of curves, and one straight from 6375-2 .
Or maybe the t-junctions were just always sold out in my town.