The thing to start with is to teach yourself to look, no not look, look at pictures. If there is something you want information on go through many pics really looking for it… and making notes about the other things you happen to spot that you hadn’t noticed before… on the way. There is no easy route to this. I’ve been in the hobby 47 years… but I didn’t start to see what was in pics until about 15 years ago.
In part it is a discipline… but, unlike many, it gets easier… the more you start to see the more you find yourself seeing. As the thread Life after MRR isn’t the same says, when you get into it you start to notice things as you drive to work, the mall… anywhere. Camera and notebook are great aids but the essential thing is a brain that is tuned in to your interest 24/7 not just when you move into the train room. this could be clled an “addiction”… maybe it is… it’s a way of just being alive to what is around you. i would guess that artists and photographers do the same. MRR is, really, an art form.
Thanks for all of the photos & info everyone, and Dave, I’ll have to save your tutorial for future reference. And no, I don’t think maintenance in the Conrail (post Erie Lackawanna) era was of the highest order.
emdgp92, thanks for the link. Those mine cars should be rescued. I had found some photos on my own, mostly of the abandoned stations.
I have an odd fascination with abandoned roads. If I glued down my scenery I would certainly model them. One site I came across while perusing the Web was http://www.forgotten-ny.com , which has many pictures of abandoned roads and building if that’s your interst too. Great site! Also of interest is www.abandonedrailroads.com. Cheers! -NSnscaler
Here’s some abandoned trackage that I modelled on my N scale layout. I’m more or less modelling the main yard on my layout after the yard in a town I lived in back in the 1970s. At the back of the yard there was a wye which used to lead to a roundhouse many decades ago. The roundhouse was long gone by the time I lived there and I’m not even sure if they used the wye. I wanted that wye on my layout but didn’t have room for it, so I made it non-functional as abandoned tracks. I didn’t put in turnouts for it but modelled it as if the railroad had removed the turnouts and laid the track straight through but never removed the wye tracks. After I laid the tracks I got my oldest granddaughter, who was about 8 y.o. at the time to paint the rails rust and scenic the area, making it overgrown with weeds. She did the entire area for me. I apologize for the poor quality of the photo–it was just a quick snapshot at the time and it looks much better in real life.
Abandoned trackage doesn’t always have to be on the ground.
Steel Bridge on the White Pass was abandoned in the 60’s when it was bypassed by new trackage. It is such an icon of the WP&Y, I plan to include it on my modern era White Pass layout.
Now that is the key to abandoned tracks… if it costs too much to pull it out (or the payback isn’t enough) leave it there to rust. It’s not always pretty but it’s interesting and nature will find a use for it.
One thing that often gets left behind, even when the fill is gone) is bridge abutments… They’re just too big and solid and have no scrap value.
When you model overgrown tracks don’t forget the paths that cats, foxes, badgers and the rest make that humans don’t even usually see. Then there’s human short cuts, bike trails and kids secret camps…
Old pallets, 40 gallon drums cardboard crates… all sorts of stuff can be used… car seats, old furniture…
If there’s hoboes or whoever they may have a fire … the police and fire department may be sorting out the mess… all sorts of things you can add…
A good way to model abandoned, paved-over trackage in an industrial park would be to model rails coming to crossties, disappearing into asphalt, and then model two medium-sized lumps in the asphalt about 60 scale feet away. These lumps would be the paved-over crossties which originally ended the siding. A subtle effect,easy to model,and easy to be identified by the true railfan.
Also,If you change time periods, you could make removable pads of gravel,weeds and/or junk for a later layout time period than when you actually use the track.Or, neatly park automobiles on paved trackage when you want it to look abandoned. Or a hybrid of both ideas: a removable pad of parked automobiles, the base of which would appear to be a mound of gravel dumped on the old trackage.
Another one: use the track secretly, as a way to get rid of trains when no one is looking.
