Vehicles are noticeable enough that their overall composition against the canvas of our layout warrants some thought. For your era and location: What’s the best mix of tractor-trailers, panel trucks, and passenger vehicles? Within the vehicle realm, what selection makes the most sense in terms of make and model (Domestic? Import? Luxury? Non-luxury?) Where should the vehicles be placed? Traffic lanes? Parking lanes only? A mix? What color mix matches your era? Do you want to alter that slightly so that vehicle color doesn’t compete with layout elements? In this scene, District Blvd. is the only major street so that’s the only one where I’ve placed vehicles in the traffic lanes. The rest are parked. (Notice the blue car parked behind the liquor store.) All have received a coating of Dullcote to account for the impact of viewing over a distance through the atmosphere.
Consider the common refrain, “I didn’t think if I did X that Y would be the result”. Note that the first three words are I….didn’t….think. Such was the case when it came to composing the vehicle composition on the early ’60s version of the LAJ.
Composition covers: the types of vehicles (tractor-trailer, box truck, or passenger car), their make and model, their color, and their position on the layout. I never really thought about it much on my previous layouts because plausible results came intuitively. If you model “now” you instinctively know what things should look like. You know that two-thirds of the colors are white, black, or silver/charcoal. If you have any doubts all you have to do is look out the window.
Moving to the early ’60s LAJ it hit me that I couldn’t rely on instinct. The good news is that working with vehicles is one of the easier aspects of the hobby. There isn’t a lot of modeling involved, and you can move them around at will to test different compositons and color mixes out. If you make a mistake you can just put the car back in the drawer and replace it.
The two images above were taken on Everett Avenue in The Central Manufacturing District. Although it’s the present day you can still learn a lot. Streets are wide and quiet (as opposed to say, Wilshire Blvd.) The area is laid out in a city block format and is populated by mid-sized industries in boxy warehouses (i.e. not like a pulp mill, steel mill, etc.) Workers park on the street and drive average cars, not beaters, not Porsches. Looking at the photos, we have a mix of about two-thirds passenger vehicles, one third semi’s, box trucks, and utility trucks. Notice the density and placement. All vehicles are parked. There are none in the traffic lanes. This would change if you were looking at a different part of town. There would be more vehicles in the traffic lanes and fewer trucks.
Nailing down color for this era will take more research. In the 1940s and early 1950s you had a lot of black and olive. I already mentioned the modern mix. The sixties seemed to go through more of a rainbow phase. A Google search of the phrase “Vehicle Color by Decade” gives a ton of great information. In the ’60s, imported cars hadn’t really caught on yet. So it was mostly domestic manufacturers.
Fortunately, there is a large selection of quality model vehicles on the market. If there is one gap, it’s that the offerings are slanted more towards luxury vehicles and brighter colors as opposed to what your average Joe drives to work. Want a brightly colored Thunderbird or Caddy? You’re in luck. Want a more muted Impala, and you have to look a little harder.
Random Thoughts and Observations
-Even though the colors in that era were brighter, I’m inclined to lean harder towards more muted hues so they don’t distract from the layout.
-You can’t put convertibles in the traffic lanes. It becomes quite obvious there isn’t a driver in them!
-Although most vehicles have a gloss sheen, this disappears with distance and atmosphere. They look much better when hit with Dullcote.
I put a lot of emphasis on buying higher-end vehicles. They run twenty to thirty dollars but are worth it. The example above is Oxford Diecast. I lean towards more muted colors. They all get license plate decals from Microscale (yellow for California during this era). They all get a spray of Dullcote (after masking off the windows).