Streets And Roads

...from my travels in Europe there is no such thing with cobblestoned areas....now I am sure, just like in the states, that primary roads have an official width, but I saw all manners and sizes of cobbled areas: alleys, courtyards, one-way streets, etc...and I am sure these vary from city to city and country to country...maybe if you include the reason behind the question it would be helpful in offering more guidance? 

My main purpose was for diorams in general and to make a nice street scene i wanted to space the sidewalks properly. there is so much scrutiny on the details of dioramas i didn't want to make an uninformed mistake and look stupid, so i thought i would ask if there was a standard as to get it correct off the bat.

 thanks for helping, it's truly appreciated,

Gary

Hey Gary, here's a couple photos of the old town of Marburg, about an hour's east of Frankfurt. It's an old historic town, so the streets are pretty much original width. The first one shows the sidewalks and street-typical for an old European town, from my extensive world traveling...

 

However, what Manny has said is true as well; there is no "officail" standard width, nor for sidewalks either. Some streets have them, some have mere footpaths, others--like the Roman-era original road here going up to the Marburg Schloss/University (the old castle) have none to speak of.  You can see the relative width in this shot...

I would just go for about a scale foot on either side of a Pz IV for a small town, and increase that to about two scale feet on either side ( + or - for the setting) for a larger town. I hope this helps you out!  

smithmilitarymodeling wrote:

My main purpose was for diorams in general and to make a nice street scene i wanted to space the sidewalks properly. there is so much scrutiny on the details of dioramas i didn't want to make an uninformed mistake and look stupid, so i thought i would ask if there was a standard as to get it correct off the bat.  thanks for helping, it's truly appreciated, Gary

...If I were you I would go with anything that looked reasonable...most towns did not have proper sidewalks as we know them, but larger cities did...and the sidewalks in certain countries were not curbed; they just rose gradually from the street in a "hump"...I have three dios posted with cobbles if you want to check them out...Road to Rome shows cobbles and a sidewalk...

Actually all of this does help me a lot, i appreciate it. hope i can help you uys in some way one day,

thanks again, Gary

the doog wrote:

Hey Gary, here's a couple photos of the old town of Marburg, about an hour's east of Frankfurt. It's an old historic town, so the streets are pretty much original width. The first one shows the sidewalks and street-typical for an old European town, from my extensive world traveling...

i was in marburg once or twice when stationed in kirch-goens in mis '70s. streets in some older towns are 1.5 times the width of an M60A2 mbt which i know because i took an AVLB through a number of them on a reforger exercise. it got so much easire when i took over the M106 4.2" mortar platoon (M113-based). sometimes, and i am guilty of this, we focus so much on the detail we lose the emotion of the scene. also i have learned colors in posted photos can be quite "off" from reality.

Hi smith,

I am new here in the forum. I accidentally read your post and your request for info about the construction of the street and sidewalk specially cobblestone.  I live in germany in the city of Bonn for seven years and I think those cobblestone street is still existing.  If you are asking for the size in terms of width of a normal street.  I can recall when I was there that two cars can fit on it easily.  and for the sidewalk would be about 4 feet from the property line up to the gutter. I am very sure about this coz I am a civil engineer by profession.  if you are doing a diorama of it I might say that you are using 1:35 scale or 1:48.  so to speak if you will be fitting a king tiger on a normal cobblestone street it might occupied atleast 1.5 of the cross section of the street.  But in any case since bonn is also an old town before there were also wide cobblestone street which can fit two tanks at the same time.  Now it is up to you whether you are doing a big or normal cobblestone street.