The "I can't believe its actually prototype" design thread

Try this one down in Houston Texas on for size:

houston texas - Google Maps


We saw some crazy stuff down there last weekend at the refineries.

 

The cement plant in Marana Arizona has a loop at the end of it to allow them to completely turn trains...

 

Not exactly the basis for an entire layout, but here's the prototype for using really short sections of rail in your track work. I found this section installed in the house track in Kennesaw (Big Shanty of Civil War great locomotive chase fame), GA. You can't get a piece of rail much shorter than this.

 

Another Houston area prototype: A stub-end staging yard: http://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&ll=29.922859,-95.057917&spn=0.004659,0.010504&t=h&z=17.
I noticed this out the window on my flight from Houston to Atlanta the other day.

 

There's a nice little oval in Louisville,KY:
Google Maps

Not quite sure what it's used for,I think PAL owns it.Judging by taking an overhead glance,it may be where they load coal. The straight stretches,if I drew the lines on google maps correctly,are about 3300 feet in length. Well under a mile,so if someone wanted,they could easily model the whole thing foot-by-foot. The oval also has the "interchange tracks" that lead off most people's small layouts.

 

From the satellite pics it appears that oval is a loading/unloading loop similar to others that have been discussed around grain facilities. You pull a train off the mainline onto the loop and then pass it through the flood loader or whatever to fill it, and it can exit the same way it entered.

Just a guess.

Here's a nice bit of trackage I've been puzzling out locally that services several businesses in downtown Lexington. A little bit closer zoom here.

The branch from the mainline follows E Loudon Avenue from the upper left to the wye in the center. Go right on the wye and you get to a building supply business between Floyd Drive and Eastland.

Go left on the Wye and you get to the Jif peanut butter plant. Take the curve across US 60 and you get to Clay Ingels, a brick products manufacturer (the stub that goes along Delaware Avenue. Beyond Clay Ingels, i believe the track is abandoned, except for what is used as lead for the stub that goes off the map to the left - to the newspaper printing plant. The abandoned track is slated to become part of a Rails-To-Trails path from Ashland through downtown Lexington and - I believe - on to Louisville, eventually.

Now, if you follow the train through this little maze, you find it's actually a real-life switching puzzle. Good thing there's a runaround on the Newspaper stub.

 

There's one not quite as good as that in E. Titusville, PA, on a remnant of the New York Central (DAV&P) serving a Weyehauser sawmill. It's still a busy customer on the Oil Creek & Titusville.

It's a switchback into the plant without enough room beyond the switch; they kept the 3-span girder bridge and about 50' beyond it - its then abandoned for about 25 miles.

The track exits to the left toward Titusville. This is literally 'the end of the earth' on a long, long, series of shortline connections that starts in Meadville, PA.

 

I found this while browsing Seattle in Bing



It reminds me of the early stages of layout construction. :tb-biggrin:

 

Is that picture upside down?

 

No, What makes you say that?

 

Something about the downward converging angles and such. It gives me vertigo unless I flip my laptop upside down.

Maybe it's just me.

 

I was using the Ariel view so that must be what gives it that weird angle.

 

Oh, OK. Well, it's a neat picture. Nice to know the prototype guys use sectional track as well.

 

Look east of Alliance, NE. There is a door layout in itself there!!!

 

I love this thread - my layout is suddenly "prototype based" :tb-rolleyes: Keep the good stuff coming!

 

I found a Prototype door-layout in Miami



There is a yard for commuter cars on the left and an engine facility on the right. It would make a nice design for a 3x6 in N-scale