One thing I’ve noticed on prototype railroads (at least here in South Carolina) is they very often have tree buffers on either side of the right-of-way. Even when the pass through open fields the tracks are usualy flanked with trees. Yet this doesn’t seem to modeled all too often. What do you guys think?
LION does not know about these trees. Maybe it was the policy of some railroad or other.
LION could see it in residential areas to cut down on noise.
LION could see that the railroad uses the trees to stabilize any embankment that the line runs on.
Mostly, I’d look to the owners of the fields. Farmers like to plant wind breaks or shelter belts around the edges of their fields.
If you know that the railroad you are modeling uses trees for either ground stabilization, for sound control, then model them, if not, they are your fields, you plant trees where you want them.
ROAR
The buffer is there on the prototypes usually because of deed restrictions. I have two friends that bought land that border railroad property. Both had a notice on the deed that they could not cut down trees within 50 ft of the center of the tracks. Supposedly this is for noise abatement. I would guess that it’s not modeled very often because most people want to see the trains running and trees would prevent this. I personally think that a few trees between the veiwer and the tracks makes the scene look better.
There might be another reason why it is not modeled. Trees located close to a model RR track might get damaged if someone reaches in say to fix a dertailment.
During the steam era, did they keep the right of way cut back from the tracks to reduce risk of fires from sparks and cinders? I’d imagine that could be a problem in a dry summer spell.
I have seen this on the prototype close to where I live. There is several areas that are like this. The trees on each side of the ROW could be a fence line where trees act as posts for barbed wire fencing. I have also seen it on abandoned ROWs on my commute to work.
HA! The only time we need a wind break is when you let that DOG of yours into the trainroom!
SP had miles of eucluptis trees planted along it’s coast route through the San Fernando Valley to act as wind barriers, SP was also responsible for all maintenance.
Dave
Comparing right of way photos locally (Milwaukee) I’d say I see more tree and shrub lined ROW now than 40 and more years ago. I am not sure any of it is intentional – the labor costs of trimming the stuff have gone up, the dedicated track crews are less, so the trimming is now often done by machines from the rails rather than guys with axes, which perhaps limits the sideways reach.
Dave Nelson
Just after the Vietnam war, LIRR used agent orange on the ROW to eliminate weeds and small trees. Well the government did want to promote a commercial use for its product. ops.
They do not do that any more, instead, there are trees and weeds there.
ROAR
More often than not there were trees mostly on one side of the right-of-way. The other side had the pole line and most roads sought to keep trees far enough away they couldn’t fall to disrupt the communications and signal wires. It was a fight, seemed trees just naturally grew better on the pole line side.
Dick
[:-^]
We have several places up here on the Canadian Prairies where the CPR had tree farms, where they grew different kinds of trees for different purposes.
Most of the evergreens were used in places that had extremely bad snow drifting and in those areas there would be a lengthy distance of these trees ( 1/4 to1/2 mile) used instead and better than snow fences. These would be on the prevalent wind side and the poles and wires would be on the other.
Johnboy out.
I’ve always believed the served as windbreaks but the railroads seldom seem to be consistant in their use; I’ve seen places where I thought they should be . . . . . and aren’t . . . . . and, of course, other places where they are and I scratched my head as to why!
Most probable reason is lack of removal. Trees and shrubs grow along fences, ditches, & railroads because no one is keeping the natural growth down. Farm fields get plowed each year so no trees can get started.