Building the modulars on road plates.

[jus1973]

I’m looking at placing all my modulars into a town style layout, with some of the fairground rides at one end and I am limited by space.  I’ve seen lots of this sort of thing done, bet almost all seem to leave the modulars on their own base plates, and just butt the road plates up, using the studded area for more footpath/sidewalk, or street side parking.

has anyone built them onto the actual road plates before, and does it look ok? 

[koalayummies]

If you build them on the actual road plate up to the curb then it would look good (example left), most of the ones I've seen incorporating the Lego road plates however are a bit lazy and just place the road plate up against the modular baseplate and are left with a super wide sidewalk (example right), it doesn't look horrible if you tile it up to the curb but many leave the road plate studs exposed like this and it just looks lazy.

The best solution however is the use the Moduverse standard or similar, which eliminates the problems with the Lego baseplates. It requires a lot of extra bricks and plates though.

Edited June 16, 2019 by koalayummies

[jus1973]

10 hours ago, koalayummies said:

If you build them on the actual road plate up to the curb then it would look good (example left).....

The best solution however is the use the Moduverse standard or similar, which eliminates the problems with the Lego baseplates. It requires a lot of extra bricks and plates though.

Thanks for the image upload, it confirms my thoughts.  Totally agree with the first point. Actually make the example you gave looked finished more than the actual sold product.  The corner buildings pose an interesting issue though.  Might have to cut (eek) the road plates, to make it work easily, to maintain the modular approach.  The town will need to expand and adapt as each new modular is added. 

Its certainly cheaper than the Moduverse, idea, which I love, but I’m on a tight budget.  

[CSW652]

I wish they would make straight road plates with parking spots where the studs are leaving 1 or 2 rows to attach the plates.

[AllanSmith]

10 years ago I made parking spots on the road plates to fill in the gap between the modular's and the road surface. Using a tile as the white line. Also made parking meters. The green line became a bike lane.

But now I have gone to 48 x 48 4 lane roads that can sit beside my MOC buildings with modular based footpaths or any of my modular's.

 

 

Edited June 17, 2019 by AllanSmith

[CSW652]

22 hours ago, AllanSmith said:

10 years ago I made parking spots on the road plates to fill in the gap between the modular's and the road surface. Using a tile as the white line. Also made parking meters. The green line became a bike lane.

But now I have gone to 48 x 48 4 lane roads that can sit beside my MOC buildings with modular based footpaths or any of my modular's.

 

 

Nice school bus, but I would prefer parking spots without studs and if you tile them you lose the curb for the modular (unless of course you raise the whole modular).

Back to the OP, you could tile to the street and then in the example of the restaurant, you could widen the outdoor eating area.

[KotZ]

On 6/16/2019 at 1:51 PM, koalayummies said:

If you build them on the actual road plate up to the curb then it would look good (example left), most of the ones I've seen incorporating the Lego road plates however are a bit lazy and just place the road plate up against the modular baseplate and are left with a super wide sidewalk (example right), it doesn't look horrible if you tile it up to the curb but many leave the road plate studs exposed like this and it just looks lazy.

The best solution however is the use the Moduverse standard or similar, which eliminates the problems with the Lego baseplates. It requires a lot of extra bricks and plates though.

The superwide sidewalk looks good if you can add things to fill it in, like parking meters, bus stops with the awnings (there's a correct term for it I'm sure), homeless encampments, etc. Moduverse looks good but is expensive.

On 6/17/2019 at 12:41 AM, jus1973 said:

Thanks for the image upload, it confirms my thoughts.  Totally agree with the first point. Actually make the example you gave looked finished more than the actual sold product.  The corner buildings pose an interesting issue though.  Might have to cut (eek) the road plates, to make it work easily, to maintain the modular approach.  The town will need to expand and adapt as each new modular is added. 

Its certainly cheaper than the Moduverse, idea, which I love, but I’m on a tight budget.  

I think if you had a corner roadplate, it would still work, right? Or if it doesn't, you could add something to the corner to help cover up the weirdness.

7 hours ago, CSW652 said:

Nice school bus, but I would prefer parking spots without studs and if you tile them you lose the curb for the modular (unless of course you raise the whole modular).

Back to the OP, you could tile to the street and then in the example of the restaurant, you could widen the outdoor eating area.

Blileywood on Youtube and Instagram does a bit of both raising and expanding the sidewalk for his city.

As for the parking spots and not losing the full curb, I feel like there's a way to experiment with cheese slopes for it. If not, getting plates from PaB shouldn't be too expensive to raise the entire build up by one plate. This might actually work better with the cheese slopes for the curb/parking.

On 6/17/2019 at 11:54 AM, CSW652 said:

I wish they would make straight road plates with parking spots where the studs are leaving 1 or 2 rows to attach the plates.

We can only dream.

[Vindicare]

I did that for a time, but it made moving them around a bit more time consuming. It did look quite good though. The biggest issue that I remember was the corners. Since you had to move it over to fill the side street, all the Modulars would be off that many studs, if you didn’t MOC anything to fill the space. Ultimately, that was why I stopped doing it that way. 

Now I just extend the sidewalk area. I take the light grey curb and move it up a few, then add a row or two of dark grey 2x2 tiles, leaving a 2x path of studs as a bike lane. It makes moving a lot easier & secures the Modular baseplate with the streetplate. 

To make the sidewalks not look too deep, I added both trees & flower areas-2x6 green plate with three flower bunches in between the studs. 

[jus1973]

9 hours ago, Vindicare said:

I did that for a time, but it made moving them around a bit more time consuming. It did look quite good though. The biggest issue that I remember was the corners. Since you had to move it over to fill the side street, all the Modulars would be off that many studs, if you didn’t MOC anything to fill the space.

That’s why I was looking at buying more straights than I needed and cutting them.  Not entirely sure that’s a good idea though.

[Brick-Surfer]

Still not sure why you are intending to build the modulars onto the actual road plate? Are you lacking space? As you are planning a town style layout go for a practical approach. The sidewalks of the modulars are usually small enough – especially if you want to integrate something like a bus stop, parking spots, some greenery or whatever … IMHO there is no better space for such things as on the 6 stud wide stripe on the edge of the road plates. That’s probably the reason most modular layouts are made like this – as you already figured out in your initial post ;) 

That’s how I’ve done it 

[jus1973]

2 hours ago, Brick-Surfer said:

Still not sure why you are intending to build the modulars onto the actual road plate? Are you lacking space?

There’s a couple of reasons.  Space is certainly one of them.  Another is simply cost.  I can’t afford to buy road plates, and then the tiles to cover them as sidewalks or parking spaces.  Finally, I also like a step down from the sidewalk to the car parking spaces/road which would mean building the modulars on a layer of plates between the basesplates and the tile layer, which is also quite parts intensive too. 

I guess its just a bunch of compromises I’m going to have to make.