Google Earth is an Internet site that displays Earth as photographed from a satellite. It requires downloading a free program to use. (A small annual fee may be made if additional features are desired.)
While trying out Google Earth on the Internet by scanning around the city where I live (Columbus, Ohio) I happened to scan over an Intermodal Terminal near the Norfolk Southern’s Watkins Road Yard. The pictures I was able to copy will be used as a great guide for constructing a part of my layout. One picture I got shows very clear details of Mi-Jack Translift Intermodal Cranes loading/unloading containers from well cars onto trailers.
Get Google Earth and scan around your city, town or anywhere in the world. Many railroad features are visible and can give you a view unavailable any other way.
You got a great idea. I have a MSN version (it only covers the US, thought) that I got with a geneaolgy program I bought. Didnt even know it came with it[:D]. Ive been looking around and rethinking the planning of my layout.
Checking the satellite photos of an industrial area a few miles from home let me see track layouts and unloading sites invisible and inaccessible from public streets. Fascinating.
The one thing that becomes obvious in a hurry is that the prototype has a lot more space to work with than we modelers do! Guesstimating (from the 60 foot boxcars on the track), the one curve off the main into that industrial area is about 720 foot radius. If I built to that standard, my garage wouldn’t be quite big enough for a Christmas tree loop…
Personally, I like the live.local program better. It allows you to get quite close to things. Just close the little welcome menu on the left and you get a decent sized pic. Check it out:
I take it that these programs have better resolution than viewing the sat photos on “Google.” I’m in the process of adding an extra switching yard and I’m using Google sat photos to view yards in my area for ideas.
There is a thread over in the general discussion forum where people have listed various interesting railroad sites on google earth. I don’t remember the title but one could probably search on “google”, “north platte”, “horseshoe curve” might find it. I believe the thread started with the twin curved tunnels in Canada.
I would give anything for your 1885 satellite photos. The only ones I have were taken by balloonists. They got lost in the fog, so there are no geographic reference points. And when they hit the mountain sides in the fog the plates were cracked so I have white lines everywhere on the pictures, too.
Fred Wright
modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it’s always 1900…
Really though, it’s funny you can get satellite pictures like of the entire facility but take out your camera for a snap shot of a loco for reference in weathering and Whoa, Homeland Security is on alert.
Hah. Look at the camera phones these days. I recall one taken where tanks were loaded onto flatcars. The next picture that I might send you is a great big Federal UH-60 Swooping down to collect me.