Is there any place that a person can find railroad maps that show the % of grade on hills on the rail line?
…Railroad grades…Now that is an interesting subject. Hope you get a bunch of hits on it…Sorry can’t help on the map.
well… dont know if this will help you or not…but check out this sight
http://www.alkrug.vcn.com/rrfacts/rrfacts.htm
csx engineer
The prototype railroads have track charts. These have a plan view which show the track arrangement and allignment schematically and the profile of the track. They also show and identify bridges and culverts, grade crossing, , rail size, type of ballast , etc.
They are somtimes available for sale from railroad collectable dealers and on ebay. Rail/transportation museums often have them in their collections.
Some Historical Societies have published copies. The Western Pacific Historical Society published one for the entire WP system (Western Pacific, Sacramento Northern, Tidewater Southern)
Some railroad books have track profiles too.
The track charts DSchmidt refers to are schematics, 1"=3000’ roughly that place 5 miles of track (lineally) on a landscape page layout. To my knowledge, there are about 5 different ways of presenting this data dependent on the railroad.
Using Rio Grande as an example: http://www.ghostdepot.com/rg/maps/index%20map%20profile.htm watching non-railroad engineers interpret these can be absolutely hysterical. Also railroads sometimes issue abridged version of these, allignment and profile only, to operating road crews and crews getting familiar with new territories…
There are condensed profiles, typically that show up in timetables and in engineering documents that may show several hundred miles on a letter sized sheet.
Using Rio Grande as an example:
http://www.ghostdepot.com/rg/maps/index%20map%20profile.htm
Engineering profile maps, scale 1=400 feet to 1"= 100’ horizontally with a skewed scale for vertical come in 11 inch rolls that are tens of feet long, were made along with ICC Val Maps under instructions issued by the ICC as General Order #1 in 1914. Before that most railroads had their own version of grade profile maps.
Rio Grande’s can be found in the Archives of the Richardson Library of the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden, Colorado
Muddy on the Mountain[banghead][banghead][banghead]
Roasting in Denver Today (108 degrees…88 degrees at Moffat Tunnel, Winter Park)
****For Santa Fe, talk to TrainNut484 and the Santa Fe Historical Society who is selling sets of track charts, clic books, and other engineering ephemera…
…Those track charts of the Rio Grande indicated by MC are really interesting…Such details. I note detail of the Thistle area…Somewhere there must be a bunch of updating about that area when the massive water build up occured.
On may roads they are called profile maps.
Dave H.