I am building a scale-model farm using a model-railroad simulator program called Trainz 2012. I have 3D trains running through a world scenery and a classic American farm is the centerpiece of my layout. I have crop fields with tractors, combines, New Holland harvesters, disk harrows and tractors pulling wagons to catch the harvested produce.
I have rows of sugar maples running along the fence line in the backs of the crop fields. I have a farmhouse with a picket fence surrounding it and a green lawn. I have a neat barnyard paved with gravel and well graded (the farmer's wife hates mud on her floors!!) with animals roaming around and a cow pasture with rich green grass on one side a row of date palms running along the front and a row of apple trees along the side. Basically my orchard is a tree line surrounding the fields which not only produce revenue for the farmer but act as a wind break as well.
The railroad tracks run along the front of the farm between the farm and a highway. All animals on my farm range freely within the barnyard and pasture area. The pigs are not enclosed in a sty but there are two chicken coops, a big cow barn with attached silo and a stable for horses. My large farm machinery is also housed in metal buildings. Barbed wire completely surrounds the property and fences keep livestock out of the crop fields. I even have a railroad siding running into the farm itself with a loading platform to load refrigerated fruit cars. I was going to put a model grain elevator on my farm to load covered grain hopper trains but that looked too humongous and ugly.
I will post a video of it here soon when "I think" it is complete.
NOW... here are my questions:
The farm machinery has to turn around along the edges of crop fields so how many SCALE feet wide should I make the dirt warning tracks (as they say in baseball) where the tractors, wagons, trucks, other vehicles, harvesters, reapers, hayers, planters, and combines turn around to go back down another row of the crop field they are working? I actually have a ruler built in the simulator software to measure the landscape. I don't want to make the dirt roads running through the fields too wide as this turn-around track real estate produces no revenue for the farm. An efficient farm needs as much of its crop-field acreage to be cultivated as possible to make cash crop money.
[IMG]http://i1252.photobucket.com/albums/hh579/roysummers85/crop%20field%20warning%20track_zpsmoiwh1f4.jp...
PS - There are no crop dusters around my farm as it is certified organic. Ladybugs work wonders for pest control. Cats police the barns for mice.
