We were traveling up to Lancaster and Strausburg PA this weekend, and for once I wasn’t doing the driving. Which gave me a great opportunity to look out the window and stuff passing by… I just happened to be looking at the right time and spotted this little industrial switching area down between two warehouses (or whatever they are) as we zipped past on the highway. I was able to capture the coords quick enough to be able to find it later on Google maps. When you look up and down the line a bit there’s more interesting stuff to see.
Industrial Switching Area
John
Ah, off 83 in York - I beleive that’s parts of the MA & PA, now York Railway. The GP-7 owned by the RCT&HS we got from the MA&PA, it’s a genuine Reading loco that was last in service on the MA&PA.
And you picked the wrong weekend to come up, last weekend you could have stopped at the big train show in Timonium. [:D]
–Randy
Interesting that the most active rail user (2 spurs, several cars on each spotted at the warehouse doors) is a trucking company!
Frito-lay’s siding seems to end just short of the pavement - and there doesn’t seem to be any place along that side of the plant where rail service would be appropriate.
The interesting part is that all three active sidings (Plus Frito-Lay and the ‘ghost’ siding which would have had a turnout under the highway bridge) are designed to be trailing point moves for a train moving from right to left. No switching puzzles or sliding-block problems, just straightforward pulls and drops…
Until, that is, you have to spot cars individually at the loading doors of the truck-to-rail transfer. Those cars AREN’T coupled together.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Looks fairly typical to me. I wonder what used to be on the end of those Frito Lay tracks. The power plant to the NE and the quarry to the west look more interesting to me.
There are still some really interesting places here in Denver. But most have been ripped out over the last 30 years. I really kick myself for not photographing everything when I move back here in 1983. There was lots. Even still had tracks in the streets in down town. Anyway check out these two below. Notice the bottom one is actually a loop. AND the track is nothing now compared to what it was 20 years ago. This place had so much track it made some of those spaghetti bowl track plans look like wide open spaces.
67th and Franklin
or
48th and Dahlia
One can still see where some of the track were ripped out here in the last 10 years. There was often a BN SD9 working this area and sitting here.
It is too bad we do not h
Also, if you go further south and west, you see that the two lines that come together after the yard to the east also come together in Hanover. In fact, it looks like there’s a double-slip switch there, and a depot! Interesting possibilities in this area.
Looks kinda simple for a track plan. It might make a good diorama, but it seems to short to be a fully fledged layout.[;)]
I think these things are probably better called Layout Design Elements (as Tony Koester likes to call them). Good elements for a larger layout, or…
…as in the case of people like myself, who lack space, time and money for larger empires, micro layouts. You might be surprised how much action, and how much real railroading you can work into just a couple switches (or turnouts). One example can be found here: http://oscalewcor.blogspot.com/. Granted, since it’s O-scale, it doesn’t seem very “micro” but reduce that to N-scale or even HO, and you have a credible micro. Also, to use an example from York. That junction of two branches, with that depo, using a double-slip switch, in conjunction with fiddle yards or transfer tables (or train turntables), you could have a busy afternoon with just this small snapshot of a railroad–and be quite prototypical doing it. Yes, we folks with few resources have to take what bones we can nab. 
-Jon