i always joke with my wife when we watch old train vidios and say when we see a roundhouse or yard ,i bet thats a wal mart or strip mall now. she gets a kick out of it, but its probably true. i know of one plase it in baltimore ,pot covington former western maryland yard and roundhouse ,guess what its a wal mart.
The old Potomac Yards in Alexandria, Virginia - big shooping center with Target and some other big box retailers (OT note: Although the had no problem building a shopping center, they couldn’t build the Redskins a stadium on the same site because of “environmental issues” - makes sense to me…)
thats just like the hagerstown roundhouse, environmental issues ,if i remember correctly five hundred thousand to clean it up . but they couldnt save the roundhouse, its a shame but life goes on. im sure something is built there by now.
In Sacramento, both the old SP and WP shops and yards are waiting for the environmentalists and the City Council to decide what to do with them. And waiting–and waiting–and waiting–
Tom [:P]
This Target stor in Chicago sits on what used to be part of the Santa Fe Dearborn Terminal…
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See the green park looking area to the right? That’s a condo complex built on the old terminal tracks area.
St Petersburg, Florida.
The passenger train servicing yard used by Amtrak (SCL and ACL before) was sold off by CSX and completely razed back in the late 80s. No trace of it left. Home Depot sits there now. Saddening for railfans, for sure.
Ironically, public officials now regret that much of the trackage route here on the Florida west coast was not purchased and used to develop light rail transit. Talked about for years, but costs deemed too high. Now with the oil crisis, rail is being looked at seriously, but costs are millions of dollars more than they would have been back in the early 90s. Ironically one of the favored routes is now the Pinellas Trail (former ACL). I doubt the environmentalist extremists here would be willing to see their “trail” be converted back to “rails”.
Hindsight’s always 20/20 [sigh][;)]
No big box developments here thankfully. Just a high-class restaurant called ‘The Freight House’ complete with old passenger cars (go figure … ) and an historic business district. Former passenger yard at the local Union Station back before the Depression served by the C&NW, CB&Q, and at least one of the other roads that ran through town. I’ll have to check at the local historical society for specifics on roads and dates. Nothing built over within the last 25 years thankfully.
Matt
Forget the dinky malls and walmarts. Watch out for the Stadium like the one in Baltimore. Camden yards used to be there.
I cannot recall the dozens of industry with trucks rolling onto dirt or at least cinders that buries a network of rails and switches a few inches down Ive seen.
Baldwin Locomotive Works now has a WalMart in it’s place.
Now THAT is more disheartening than losing a yard or mainline. Should have been a transportation museum that moved in. My 2c.
Matt
And that’s surrounded by a large Boeing aircraft plant making helicopters.
Mark
The environmentalists didn’t have a say, the City Council passed along their plans to developers last year, so the ball is now in the developers’ court for the most part. In the case of the SP shops, they’re not waiting, they’re working–lots of toxic dirt to move out of the way, but it should be done by next year. In the case of the WP shops, the developer just changed his mind about what he wanted to do, seeing as the housing market isn’t quite as hearty as it was a couple of years ago.
There are no Wal-Marts or strip malls planned–the SP shops have a Bass Pro shop planned, but that will probably be the only big box. The WP shops idea right now is a couple of hundred tract homes and probably a Rite-Aid.
Sacramento’s other former yards, those belonging to the Sacramento Northern, have varied fates. The Front & M Street freight yard is a hotel, the 12th Street union station yard is a motel, the 17th & D Street freight yard and motor storage facility is a condominium, and Haggin Yard is a bike trail.
I used to work for a company that did construction testing and in Cleveland, I believe, there was a Wally World and strip mall going in place of a yard that served a steel plant.
Thankfully, in downtown Dayton, where I live, they remodeled an old B&O freaight house and kept most of it intack. They also have a Chessie caboose on the lot. The best part, for me, is my grandfather used to work upstairs as a clerk there. Some day I plan to build some modules that incorperate the freight house as it was used in the 60’s.
The old PRR yard in town here 30 miles north of Pittsburgh is a parking lot and buildings for a local farm/building supply company. Way back when, they were served by a spur off the yard there and just expanded after Conrail pulled up the tracks. They fly a US, PA, and PRR flag on-site, so someone important there has some knowledge of what used to be there and chose to remember that.
The huge Pullman-Standard plant got whittled away over the years. Half of it was gone even by my memory, and now its a strip mall that’s almost gone completely out of business. Most of it sits empty and the last survivors are a filthy little Jo-Ann Fabrcis, a Domino’s, and Kmart, so they’re barely hanging on. Another part is a small office park, lot of doctors and dentists. The rest of the plant got torn down in the last two years or so, and they’re in the process of cleaning up the site for some purpose. The good sized PS office building had its old cafeteria wing torn down, probably before it collapsed on its own. The rest of the building recently had its windows replaced and rumors fly of apartments some day.
Part of the old depot area here in Bedford, Massachusetts, is becoming Depot Park. It stands at the end of the Minuteman Bikeway, which runs along the old right of way from the abandoned railroad tracks. Depot Park has an old Budd RDC, and they’re refurbishing the old freight house to serve as a visitor center.
Across the street, what is now an open area serves as the venue for our new Farmers’ Market, which comes to town every Monday afternoon.
Overall, it’s not a bad evolution.
I think the newer Wal-Mart in Durango, Colorado is close to where some stock yard pens used to be way back when. I do know it’s very near the old Carbon Junction location were the two lines split for Farmington or Chama.
Both lines were abandoned in the late 60s and the Wal-Mart didn’t come along until a few years ago. So it probably doesn’t count much for this thread.
When I was very young, 9 years old and earlier, in my Lionel years, our house sat across from a very large tract of farmland. Although our side of the street was suburbia, the other side was agriculture, and we even had a cow wander into our front yard once.
A while back, I got the idea of using Google Earth to look at old homes I’d had. I figured that farmland had long been gobbled up by tract housing, but I was shocked to see that the front windows of my bucolic boyhood home looked directly into the rear loading dock of a big-box store of some kind.
So, it’s not just old rail property that’s being eaten up by “progress.”
I wonder how many people a hundred or so years ago complained how the railroads were gobbling up pristine land and bringing in so much noise and smoke?
Even today, if people HAD to choose, I think most would choose a Wal-Mart over a rail yard.
Also in Chicago there is the demise of the Union Stockyards.
Now it’s an industrial park that is mostly abandoned as the blue collar workers of Chicago nowadays are more interested in collecting welfare and electing people like Barak Obama to the Senate than having jobs.
Our newest large chain hardware store is on an old environmental haz waste site.
I toured the Sacramento Locomotive shops in Jr High School. RIP! =(