I read the article, Introduction to layout design elements
The Layout Design Element can help you do a better job of designing part or all of a model railroad.
by Tony Koester
and it got me thinking how can I get a look at a prototypes layout? I suppose the easiest way, short of having a map would be to look a aerial photos but where do I find those, if they exist, for the railroads I want to view?
One way to get a glimpse of a prototype is to use Google Maps and look at the satellite images. The results can be quite blurry for some locations but overall I can get a fair idea of what the prototype has done.
Just checked the industrial area about five miles east of my humble abode. The map feature wasn’t very informative, but the satellite views sure were! I learned about a lot of sidings and spurs that are inaccessible to public-street railfanning.
In this particular area the satellite images are very good. Resolution goes down to approximately N scale! This is not universally true. The area around Virginia City (where old V&T right-of-way is easy to recognize on the ground) blurs out, then comes up with a notice that satellite images are not available, at a scale of approximately one mile per inch.
Still, for people who want to look for specifics about their chosen prototype, or any railroad of interest, this is a very useful resource.
I find that I use a combination of several sources for this type of “peeking”. The Google Earth site is good for getting a good feel for the overall setting and “look” of a place. However, the resolution is varies and not all the rail lines are accurately placed. If you then add a site with topo maps (usually include rail lines) and aerial photos, you can get some good details. Usually the aerial photos are relatively recent (for better or worse). Different scale topo maps are from different eras - the most recent (1:24,000 or 1:25,000) are usually more detailed but if you shift to 1:48,000 or 1:50,000 some of the maps are from a few decades back. (You can often adjust the display scales seperately from your selection of original map scales.) If this is not the case with the web sites, try to get to a university library with a map collection that dates back a ways.) Here are two web sites for these resources: