Details that define the era modeled

[slynch]

Received a couple of the Classic Minature Woody cars. Neat item, and certainly places a layout in the late 40's -50's. Same as a 65 Mustang or a model-T sets the tone for the time era. Esso signs, Movie poster ads, and antennas do this quickly also as an example.

What other items do you use to do this? Removable details (like cars) and common items fire plugs in red/yellow, no zip codes, blue post office drop boxes, etc.. The boxcars we use and corporate buildings (Mac Arches for example) are stand outs. I am asking about the every day items. Milk Man truck, newspaper boy, cop on the beat, coal delivery to a house, etc.

Regards, Steve

------------------

[LnNrr]

Oh, there's SO many! Example, no billboards
for Packards if you have an Edsel on your
layout. Yellow stop signs were of one era
and green highways signs are of another,
almost no overlap. In an urban area, trolley
tracks in the streets are a time tip-off.
And if the main streets show no tracks but
cross streets have tracks with filled-in
flangeways would say 50s in many cities.
And filling stations change. Not to mention
that the companies change regionally.
No SOCONY stations in the South, for example.
The lenght of womens dresses and whether
men are wearing hats is an era change.
Taxicabs, no Checker Metropolitans before
the 50s. Wooden phone booths disappeared
about then as well.
Crossing guard shanties are a relic
of the first half of the 20th century, with
hand signs or manual crossing gates.
Semaphore signals rarely saw a diesel, and
the lower quadrant signals largely went away
in the 20s and 30s. Some few manual
interlocking plants lasted into the 60s. FEW.
Drive-in movies, theaters advertising
"AIR CONDITIONED", and signs painted
directly on brick walls all signal an era.
Out houses were in most cities at one time,
but retreated to the suburbs and lastly in
small towns and on farms.
Wires. From the 'teens through into the
50s most of our cities were massive webs
of electric wires, telephone wires,
telegraph wires, etc. Once the phone cos
started laying underground, a lot of that
disappeared.
Enough for now, but that only scratches
the surface.

Chuck

[StickyMonk]

i dont know about removable items but i recently changed eras from 1992 to 2000 and even though its only 8 years it means i have to remove all the rotary beacons of my BN locos and move the horns off the cab which means i got lots of nice holes to fill in....

------------------
wheres all the C636's????
stickymonk.com (http://www.stickymonk.com)
Matts Photo gallery (http://monkhome.homestead.com)