I have been using Google Maps to research some possible areas to model for my first layout. I am currently planning on using Lance Mindheim’s Palmetto Spur unless I can find something I can model that is similar. I live in North Dakota and was looking at the Fargo area. I saw a couple of areas that might make good examples, but I don’t have any idea what the spur(s) name(s) would be. I’ve noticed that Lance seems to know the names of the spurs he models. How does one find out the name of a spur, if there is one. If not, what you use to name the layout?
This can be tricky. I can’t speak for anyone else, but often locals know the “local” spur name.
In civil engineering we rely on old maps and old plans, or railroad valuation maps, when they are available. One cannot assume that various websites have the correct “historical” name, because it may have changed–just like many of the maps include railroad names that could be 2, 3, or even 4 Class 1 railroads ago (here in Pennsylvania).
most railroads have a directory of businesses and their mileposts. On the PRR it is called the CT1000. If there is an historical society for the area you model or the railroad that orginated the track you should be able to get further information
In my experience there are often names for spurs and sidings that are given by railroad crews which are passed from generation to generation but about which even the railroad itself might officially know nothing. The railroad likely assigns it a number but not a name.
In my hometown there was a “Badger siding” which I heard the crews and section gang members talk about, but which seems to appear nowhere in any official C&NW document. It was named for a manufacturing firm at the end of the siding, Badger Malleable. The siding kept that name long after Badger Malleable was torn down and the siding shortned so that it no longer went as far as that property.
I have also heard crews at Milwaukee’s Butler Yard refer to the “A&P siding” long long after that food store chain’s warehouse ceased to be a rail customer or even exist. And again I do not seem to find official railroad documents that use that name.
A working railroader once showed me a book of much-xeroxed crude track plans that he had been given at some point. They were not track charts but sheets of paper done with magic markers and the tracks had names, some of which were clearly archaic and no connection to any business currently located on the siding. It was all very informal.
If you can find one a ETT will give some industrial lead names…A local industrial lead here is known as Spore Industrial lead and it only serves National lime Stone quarry at Spore.
While my Slate Creek Industrial park is fictitious there is a real Slate Creek I used that name instead of my more generic 12th Street industrial lead. I also favored Deer Creek Industrial lead but,it didn’t have “pa-jazz” for me like Slate Creek.
There is a good historical resource in the Sanborn Fire Insurance maps and many of them will have names of industrial sidings or at least the name of the business it served.
I haven’t gotten into the operating of my layout yet, but if you’re a free lancer, like me, you can name your leads or spurs anything you want. For instance, my layout features a large brewery, called The Mud Hen Brewery (named after the minor league baseball team Toledo Mud Hens). It is the largest industry on the layout, served by three tracks. I imagine I could call this a number of names, such as “the Mud Hen Spur” or the “Beer Lead” or the “Mud Hen District”, just to name a few. For free lancers, the imagination can be the guide, which is anything you want to call it.
The “spur” name depends on what you are calling the “spur”. Railroads name their routes. Major ones are called “suddivisions”, “branches”, “districts”. Ones that just serve multiple industrial tracks are often called industrial leads. There may also be tracks that break off of a main track that serve one or more customers (called “business tracks”). Many times these will be in the employee timetables.
Individual industry tracks can be found in ZTS (Zone-Track-Spot) or CLIC books.
Then there are the colloquial names that the crews just call things because they have “always been called that”. Unless you can find some sort of document written by the crews to tell other people those names, you won’t find them in any official publication. In one yard we had the “runners”. They were long yard tracks (actually the old passenger main lines around the freight yard ), they had an official track number but nobody called them that, they were always called the “runner”.
If you can find a ZTS, SPINS or CLIC book for your area of interest that would be the easiest, after that an employee timetable and then a conductor’s cheat sheet.
Kent, I just took a look at Fargo on Google Maps, what area are you thinking about?
Maybe, since you live in the area, you could catch a MOW crew working in town, or at a restaurant, and ask. Or, if you notice a local, working any industries in town, you can get some info, or if you have a scanner you might be able to pick up some language, as to what they are doing.
If doing a absolute prototype of what is going on in town, I could understand that you want the correct names, but if this is free lance at all, even if you use the BNSF, name your spurs and sidings as you wish.
It looks like the BNSF has a huge presence in Fargo, with all of the activity East of town. There is even the gost image of a huge roundhouse out by the BNSF office, south of the tracks.
I’m guessing, back in the day, this was all GN territory and yards, maybe with some NP mixed in.
The LION linves in North Dakota, western end of the state. Him not gets to Fargo very often, maybe once or twice a year. But if you drive out west you can come and visit the LION. Him has the largest SUBWAY LAYOUT in the whole state of North Dakota.
HMmm… him not even know if NYCT has names for its various pockets. (Sidings are called “pockets” on the subway.) You can layup a work train or a gap train there, or hide a train being taken out of service for a mechanical issue.
At 14th Street, the LION has a pocket for three trains to lay up overnight. Maybe I should call them “Union-1”, “Union-2” and “Union-3”. Him also has two single train pockets near Chambers Street. Lets call them “Chambers North”, and “Chambers South”
LION also has some service tracks near Penn Station. Have to think about that. I’ll have to ask over at the Subway Forum to see what names the sity uses for these pockets.
Larry, Having lived “just down the road” from Toledo (Dayton), I was familiar with the whole western part of the state. And, yes, I also remember Klinger on MAS*H. Every now and then I catch an episode of that show on cyndicated re-runs.
Me too! Here’s my favorite “non-railroad” coffee mug:
I’m not sure what’s left of Tony Packo’s. I know the family was in some dispute over ownership…[edit] I guess they’re still hanging on! http://www.tonypacko.com/
I’ll have to find a list of track functions, i.e. like Dave H. mentions, runner; main; drill track; controlled siding; run-around; lead; interchange; etc.
I have some names on my layout that I just like the sound of, some are local street names or names of old railroad yards, some even named after cats I used to have.
My staging tracks are below the main layout. It is called Sydney yard—it’s “Down Under” The old B&O roundhouse was near Quigley Road in Cleveland, I have a Quigley Yard, too. The hand-off between Cleveland Union terminal and Nickel Plate was at a place called Cloggsville. I have a Cloggsville Runner on my layout.
You can look up old industry names and use them too. I have a Cleveland Twist Drill track and an Elwell-Parker Siding.
My railroad also uses Control Points, or CP as the Penn Central used to have. I recently added one called “CP Slope” after an actual PRR location. On my layout it controls a track that actually goes down a “slope”. Near Union Station is CP Union… you get the drift.
