Hi
Can anybody help a modelrail builder in the UK who’s looking for track plans and building pictures in the area’s of McCook, Cambridge and Oxford in Nebraska.
egmodelrail:
BNSF is rather reluctant to reproduce R/W maps for people it cannot identify as public or private sector engineers and surveyors. For the ones who can be identified as having legitimate reasons for requesting the information, it still costs upwards of $50 a sheet for reproduction and mailing (e-mail Pam.Foston@BartWest.com for an estimate). McCook (6+ sheets total)is a relatively large …facility (yard & engine facility, old Division HQ) and Oxford & Cambridge are relatively small with two or three industry tracks and a 7000 Ft. coal train siding/ 3 sheets each (Oxford Jcn is 3 miles east of Oxford)…Have you started in a macro sense by looking at MSN’s Terraserver? …The collection in the national archives would give you what the railroad looked like in the 1920’s and costs more to reproduce (e-mail doyou@ix.netcom.com and ask for an estimate)…Also, do not be surprised if some of that line’s mapping is not standard 28"x57" ICC standard format, but rather an odd 28" x 28" format built around the public lands survey system and CB&Q’s old Lincoln Land Company which is common all across Nebraska.
Some of BNSF’s reluctance to release data is the post 9/11 trauma, the rest predates that and has to do mostly with small local governments being busybodies and or looking for something to tax (which is illegal by federal mandate, but they still try)…It also doesn’t help that many folks can’t read a map, much less an engineering drawing or survey plats - the misconceptions tend to create all types of unintended ill-will!.. Perhaps somebody may be able to cough-up a track chart (1"=3000’ schematic line drawing, lineal rough representation of the line) that could give you a start.
Mudchicken
If you really want to replicate McCook’s yard, you need to put your layout’s track in a blender or better yet, a vise first. The rail was there when the Vikings were still sailing and the switches and frogs are beat to death. It is a pretty small yard. The brief spell that I worked there, there were a few switches that I always worried about splitting. You need to try to replicate Argentine yard in K.C., Kansas. Now there is a nitemare.
Ken