ok, lets fire away with a question that is startling me for some time. In my 20 years of lego collecting I obtained a lot of road-plates. Problem with these is that they changed in the years. Below a short summary of the plates in my collection:

First I started to pick up some grey, with green lines like this one:

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?P=610px1

Followed by the slightly modified grey, with green lines but with side-walk like this one:

http://www.bricklink.com/catalogItemPic.asp?P=2361p01

Finally I have a lot of the newer roads in my collection like this one:

http://shop.lego.com/ByTheme/Product.aspx?...;cn=356&d=9

When this completely other type appeared I bought a lot of these, to replace my older ones, but when trying to set up a complete town-plan this conflicts often with the baseplates of buildings. And of course its quite a waste of good road baseplates.

So my million dollar question is:

How do you combine different types of road baseplates?

Thank you

~Lockt~

Hello Lockt, you have an excellent question. The best idea I can think of at the moment is to have large areas of certain base plates in certain areas. Combine your first two examples together so that they are all grouped in one area, then put all of the newest baseplates in another area. It could be justified as older parts of your town would have the older base plates, and newer areas have newer types of base plates. Perhaps you could add all of your classic town buildings (or as many as you could) onto the older baseplates to give that area a more older look. Good luck I look forward to your ideas and how you solve this age-old mystery.

BTW welcome to Eurobricks , perhaps you should introduce yourself HERE

Edited May 30, 200816 yr by MacK

I only have old gray road plates with bike lanes. I buy the same road plates from eBay if I need them. I like continuity. Don't want to have 4 different types of road plates. So you could sell all the other types of road plates and use the money for only one type. Otherwise I think MacK's recommendation is fine.

Here's another view to the topic. First, I do not mean to diss roadplates, on the contrary, if you can get them easily and with reasonable price, that's just wonderful! But there is an option, which is also in line with LEGO heritage.

I also tried to collect just one sort of roadplates, first the oldest ones and then the newer ones, for years, but when TLC started packing X's with Curves and T's with straights I got so fed up with it I rethought the whole concept and decided to go really old school: I do not use roadplates at all anymore, but rather just baseplates like 32 x 32 greens and 48 x 48 greys to create blocks and areas. Here's the old school thing: I use printed cardboard for roads, generally following the baseplate dimensions and geometry, but some times also altering it for better fit. This gives more flexibility in landscaping, and is a lot cheaper.

Hello Lockt, you have an excellent question. The best idea I can think of at the moment is to have large areas of certain base plates in certain areas. Combine your first two examples together so that they are all grouped in one area, then put all of the newest baseplates in another area. It could be justified as older parts of your town would have the older base plates, and newer areas have newer types of base plates.

That's pretty much what I do in my town (here's a picture that kinda shows it). I use the grey roadplates in the industrial areas and downtown area, and the green roadplates in the residential area. I think it works okay, and helps to create visual separation of the different areas.

My biggest complaint about roadplates these days is the freakin' PRICE! A package of two road plates used to cost $5, and now it's $12. I also hate that they package different configurations together. Being able to buy 2 straights, 2 curves, etc. was a lot more useful than being forced to buy a cross or a T that I may not want.

Thank you for some good ideas. Similar I tested with connecting different areas when crossing railroads. In fact Fluxington provided me with some more ideas how to seperate the different areas.