Track photos

Great photos with good composition, a good method to train(bad pun) your eye on the content. Black and white photos are quite interesting. I can concentrate on the track and not the colors of the vegetation.

Eill nice track pictures. Thanks for sharing.

I've been surveying the "Redlands Loop" for several years, taking measurements of various buildings, photographing the right-of-way where the track is gone and areas where the track still exists. The part that was last used (a couple of years ago) was all industrial. I've attached a couple of  PDF Sanborn Maps of the Highland Area in addition to the photos. If you can get access to them, they're a great resource for track alignments and industry placements. Sanborn maps were used by Fire Insurance companies to determine exposure in various areas across the country. I'll look through my archives to see what else I have.

 

This first one is a car pickup at the Sunny-Cal Milling company on Texas Street North of Redlands Blvd. The cars to be dropped off are on the "main" behind me (I'm well away from the tracks) and will be pushed in with the empties as idlers. The mill has since closed down and the facility is being torn down. The BNSF crew was very friendly since I was well out of their way.

 

This is the Redlands Depot, which still stands today. The grass patch is where a siding was located. Word is that at some point Metrolink will be running a shuttle service down the remnants of the Loop between San Bernardino and Redlands but I don't see the practicality.

 

This is the Highland Orange Association Packing house building. It's now a factory where they make prosthetics. The building was recently touched up as a historical landmark of the area. I'll have to dig through my notes, but I think the building was configured for spotting three 40-foot cars. The gravel patch my previous truck is sitting on is where one of the sidings ran through and a spur supported this building and the one down the line from it.

 

Another packing house (more recent) across the right-of-way from the Highland Orange Association building.

 

This warehouse was vacant at the time I took the photo. This is a section of the Loop in San Bernardino a few miles southeast of the San Bernardino Depot where the tracks cross Mill Street. I may or may not model this.

 

This is an odd-ball. There was a dairy farm here off Waterman and Orange Show Road. This shot is facing East from Waterman. There was also a cattle ramp there at one time. This is all gone now. In the distance, there was a lumber yard (also now gone) that took centerbeam shipments (you can barely make one out in the distance.)

 

Forgot to add something. The Library of Congress has a Historic Architecturual Building Survey that features some photos of various points of interest nationwide. That's where I picked up some good drawings of the National Orange Company packing house in Riverside (alas, it burned down the weekend before I planned to take measurements.)

 

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/

 

Dr. Jim Lancaster has a great site if you're into Packing houses in Southern California

 

http://www.coastdaylight.com/ljames1/scph.html

 

Lastly, your two best friends are Google Maps and Historic Aerials. You can trace track routes and get aerial views of various industries. I like to find them with Google maps and if they're abandoned rights of way I use Historic Aerials for past photos.

 

http://maps.google.com

http://www.historicaerials.com/

 

 

Great photos Will.  That is one of the best things you can do to get ideas and a feel for the track work, color, texture of the ties, condition of the roadbed and so on...

 

Matt also some great pics.  That depot at Redlands would be great to model.

 

Those ground throws are something not often photographed so well as you've done Will, overall very good subject matter, and thank goodness there not 3 rail....

 

Bob

Here are pictures of a switch/siding to a quarry facility on the Genesee & Wyoming. The pictures show detail of the grass growing up over the siding - an interesting feature to duplicate on a model railroad.

Some track photos taken at CSK (Conrail CP367)

I haven't done any ground cover or detailing yet, but I "submerged" my Yard tracks so tie-tops and ballast are at ground level. I used Brennan's yard ballast which appears to be sooty and greasy. I used 3/16" foamcore board to bring the ground level up to tie-top. I painted the foam core on both sides before glueing and it stayed in place when I applied wet water and glue mix to the ballast.

I like the "yard" look as opposed to mainline elevated on cork or, just ties above ground level. 

Thanks. I have the Redlands Depot digitally modeled with RR-Track from measurements I took a few years ago. The columns are a problem as I would have to precision-cut a master to make a mold from and I don't really have the lathe skills. I got a lead that some wedding cake risers may actually be a close match and I've been searching, A scale model would be just over six feet long for the passenger shelter. The actual station is pretty basic and is pretty close in size, shape, and configuration to the Atlas Trainman station listed a couple of years ago.

 

I'm probably going to go back out on the Loop in a couple of weeks to survey its reclamation by nature as it's pretty much abandoned.

Seminole Gulf Rwy., Fort Myers, Florida, circa 2006.

 

 

 

 

Matt

Matt the cake pillars is a great idea, most are fluted but that's an easy fix.  I just love the look of that station. 

Thanks. Here's a 3D rendering of a module design of the area. The original tracks that were in front of the depot are in place on the module set. The passenger shelter features 72 columns, 12 of which are rectangular with the other 60 being tapered round with round capitals.

For those really into building switches, I have a nice set of detail shots of a mag insert switch

 

https://skydrive.live.com/redi...D5F0BBC300F3D13!1567

 

Below is an example of the type of photos in the library

 

Not my photo, but one of my favorites

Matt very nice, that's why I love RR Track, the 3 dimensional views are just so helpful in planning and prep.  I bet that would look great on the layout.

 

Mike very nice photos of the switches, you definetly got the details in there....

 

Patrick that is wild man!...Where the heck is that at? 

Chris I think that was somewhere in Florida.  Probably CSX main line LOL

 

That's pretty much what most of my track will look like.  Sprung trucks mandatory on my layout

LOL....I like it. 

If locomotives and rolling stock are the coffee, then track is definitely the cream and sugar!

 

Two of my favorites are the CNJ Bronx Terminal (I think this was discussed extensively here, but I couldn't find it with search so see Google for more) and gauntlet tracks. For less than pristine track work see the Skaneateles short line:

 

     http://abandonedrailroads.home...com/Skaneateles.html

 

Simon