how many people here have train line that goes in and out of there town.(not including little passenger lines)
my town has like 1 main line going in and out it. hopefully one day i plan to do a module on my down town part with the movie theater as the main focus(n scale)
There was once a time that my town had PRR-B&O diamonds, with the Bessemer & Lake Erie choosing to elevate their track over throat of the PRR yard, and a PRR-B&LE-B&O junction less than a quarter mile north of all that. Conrail pulled up the PRR tracks in the late 80s. Chessie sold off the B&O tracks to the Buffalo & Pittsburgh. Despite being fairly busy, I never see any traffic personally. There’s a passing siding that runs along with main road into town, and crews drop entire trains there so they can run light to the B&P facilities a few miles north. But all I ever see is a new train waiting for its power to come back. B&LE is CN now, but CN seems to leave well enough alone. They’ve even repainted some B&LE locomotives in their B&LE colors since the merger, so CN appears to not really care. But its future is in some doubt right now, as B&P is almost finished with its own track into the AK Steel property. AK Steel is the B&LE/CN’s last customer, other than the coal facilities at the north and south ends of the line.
In Bedford, Massachusetts, we have a former rail line, last used as commuter rail but now abandoned and turned into the Minuteman Bikeway. The original line, operated by the Middlesex Central Railroad, began operation in 1873. Commuter rail service ended in 1977.
From the Bedford Depot area, there’s an extension to Concord, Massachusetts, called the Reformatory Branch. That was abandoned even earlier, and now exists only as an unpaved footpath, also used by mountain bikers. (Motorized use is prohibited on both trails.)
In addition, there is yet another abandoned bed, from the narrow-gauge Bedford & Billerica Railroad.
Yea, I do. CSX’s old main line, MARC/CSX near Jessup MD, and route 32, on the jessup line, there is a branch that goes to several industries in columbia.
Where I currently live we have a secondary UP mainline that is mostly used by Amtrak .
The town I moved from in Southern Indiana , had NS, the Indiana Southern , and the Algiers , Winslow & Western , never a dull moment , plus I was not far from the CSX line .
I live in an urban area, and my town has ONE traffic light (if you don’t count the one on a town border!) We’re also at the top of a pretty good hill 500’+! The next town over has CSX (ex conrail ex ?) and very active NJTransit and a not very active NY Western & Susqeuhenna - or whatever they call it!! They actually switch on a low trestle over the Passaic River & have a little street running in Garfield NJ, so it’s pretty interesting. When I was a kid, the Erie ran through the center of town - now NJTransit commuter, and the West Shore branch of the NYC ran on the west side of town where I lived - can still remember the steam whistles in the middle of the night!!! [8D]
My home city has a UP line (LA&SL) running right through the middle of it. Most of the road/rail crossings are grade-separated (with work underway to separate the one nearest my humble abode) but there are still flat crossings, even in the middle of town.
The main problem with trying to model it wouldn’t be the railroad itself. It would be the towering line of casinos paralleling it, with all of their huge, garish signs.
My town (Amherst, N.S.) sits on a bottleneck between two provinces. Through this route the CN line runs from a major seaport, Halifax, and travels to the rest of the Eastern part of the country. In fact, the Google Earth snapshot show a container freight heading north blocking traffic on the Victoria St. crossing, while the head end is well out on the marsh (N. America’s largest salt marsh).
Container traffic is heavy, and there still is some VIA passenger service running from Halifax to Montreal.
Most of the rest of the province’s rail line have been abandoned, some are now bike or snowmobile trails.
My original home town (Richfield MN) had a line going thru it north-south roughly splitting the town in two halfs…it came up from the south through Bloomington but only went a few blocks into Minneapolis to serve some industries and ended there. (Originally the end of the line was in Richfield, but in the 1930’s Richfield sold it’s northern part to Minneapolis. So Richfield Hardware and Richfield Lutheran Church are in Minneapolis.)
Medina ohio has the wheeling and lake erie that runs through and does switching work at all the industries. Spencer ohio(near medina) has the csx mainline double track that runs through it.
Virginia Beach had a branch line of the old Norfolk Southern running through almost to the oceanfront. Freight sevice was suspended about 8 years ago, but there is a light rail commuter train under construction on the Norfolk portion of the right-of-way. It was planned to run to the beach, but the locals voted it down in a fit of HUTA-NIMBYism. Of course, gas was only $1.00/gal back when they voted. I wonder how they would vote now!
The Bay Coast RR has a line from the Little Creek carfloat yard into Norfolk which runs right on the border with Va. Beach. This line still sees at least one transfer run a day to NS.
My city has both a BNSF main (ex CB&Q I think) and CP main (ex SOO) complete with yards and a diamond crossing between the yards. All about two to three miles from my current residence
I know the C&NW also ran through town with a yard - passenger and freight - way back when along with at least two other RRs.
NS is all over around here. It’s out by my city’s recreation complex (citizen’s park), and all downtown as well. there’s one portion of line I’m going to model for my shortline, it’s almost a tunnel, but the top is open to the air.
Theres a BNSf mainline that runs throught town and Missouri and north Arkansas line that crosses BNSF but the MandA is very slow and very few train mabey fiver a MONTH if its buissy but if one comes throught it take longer than leagle time, yea and over 100 cars long most of the time but they go 10mph FOR CRYING PUT LOUD!!! and it causes trafic to backup a long way, But the good news is I live on the other side of town and I don’t have to deal with it very much.
I have the former Erie Lackawanna (Erie) main line, now NJTransit’s Bergen Main Line. It is extremely busy with their passenger traffic, but freight except for locals is a thing of the past.
I have the best of both worlds. Norfolk Sothern on one side of the river,and the other is CSX. Theres a decent railyard in a town near me, but its all CSX [xx(] . I hear trains all day. Somedays alot and then there are some days very few.