I have some strong opinions about how individual trees (and from there, forests) should look. Over the years I have put by lots of goodies for tree making (as/when I’ve been able to scrounge them).
…so now I realise that most of my planning is for more urban/industrial locations. (Chicago area(ish) 1980s - H0).
This raises questions about what,if any, foliage I should be thinking about. I’m also wondering whether anyone else has dealt with this question?
That’s real easy, use any of the mapping programs that have satellite views, trees are easy to spot. And if you are modeling the 1990’s, current photos will not be that far off.
I would think there would abe a lot of smaller trees in “marginal” areas, vacant lots, unmowed RofW, abandoned factories. Lots of sumacs and "wild " vegetation.
Thanks for the quick reply. Do you reckon more uncontrolled plant invasion for the 80s or less please?
Given a fairly well used line in the broader Chicago area how “unmowed” would the RoW tend to be… I’m thinking one line (1st and 2nd Main) carrying mostly freight with maybe one Amtrak on some weekdays and a second line carrying light freight and the far end of a Metra shuttle…
Shell of old cotton compress, covered with bouganvillaea vine, from a boulevard lined with tall palms and oleanders. I always remembered as a kid arriving in Galveston and passing four blocks of these foliated buildings. I came to call it the “Garden Warehouse District”. Figured I just had to include it in my Galveston, Texas themed layout so I shot the remains of the buildings and the boulevard in 1995. I am just getting around to buiulding this layout. Everything that was there is gone.
It’s not so much the “getting out in the wild”, or even across the pond as the time travel that I find difficult! [:-,] I’m hoping to find some actual detail for the 80s rather than just make a broad guess.
Those pics are brilliant though! [^]
I especially like the spur past the building. It show such a good variety of brickwork including damage and repairs. I wonder if I can link it into the “brickwork from photos” thread?
Can anyone tell me how to save and/or print pics from the maps in useful sizes please?
And now a few more. Urban trees are too easy. Industrial/ factory district trees take a little more looking through the old piles of proto snapshots.
An alley in a Saint Louis industrial and warehouse district about 4 blocks west of the Mississippi River, in 1994. Yours truly with camera at left. Two blocks in distance, in between two approach ramps leading to bridge over Mississippi River is A tree, stuck in somewhere between the track in street and highway right-of-way. (Building just to right of frame has bricked-over windows painted with phoney pictures of window panes and painted “reflection” of a boxcar spotted on siding, with reversed Santa Fe lettering. I posted that picture 2 or 3 months ago in a collection of interesting prototype structures.
The trees visible over the roof of the building are, if I remember rightly, in a courtyard of the building. The building was used as Thompson Sling Co., making cable slings for shiploading cranes, etc. when I took the shot back in 1996. Of course, the photo was taken to document the mural. Located in at 6600 block of Harrisburg Blvd in Houston, Texas about 1 1/2 miles from the Port of Houston turning basin. Building had been through several occupants down through the years- engine blocks, salvage store, etc. I grew up in 1950-1960 one block from here. Houston Belt and Terminal branch is 1/2 block past left end of picture.
Well, see if you can get hold of some back issues of Trains or other magazine with prototype photos in your area from the 1980’s - and/ or books covering the same. Also, the photo sites on the Internet usually have some older photos.
For specific trees, look up the the appropriate web pages at the agricultural extension universities for Illinois and/ or Wisconsin. I seem to recall that each has an extensive on-line library of tree shapes, characteristics, typical photos, preferred environments, etc. Also, a lot of what we see around railroads are now referred to as the evil ‘invasive’ species, and there’s a lot of info on-line regarding how to recognize them, too. If I have some extra time later on I’ll see if I can find and post a few of those websites for you.
This is similar to what one responder refered to as a kind of “trash tree” growing in the space between shop building and dirveway/ parking.
Still at Inman. I believe there was a small undeveloped open space between the trackside shop and a residential neighborhood, which the trees decided to take over.
A bulk oil dealer in Corpus Christi, Texas, 1986? The crossing signal in the foreground protected the Texas Mexican Railroad (now gone). There was a little untromped space space behind the tanks and the trees took it.
This is at the “New Terminal Warehouse” (built about 1930, that’s how “new”) at the Port of Houston, Texas. taken about 1990. The ending of the road at the concrete bulkhead forground is where there used to be a fairly low-level street bridge, replace by the higher-level bridge whose railing is at left edge of photo. In 1950s, there was a small vertical lift bridge for a rail line about 50 feet right of where the photo ends.
Maybe I should re-name this as “a Tree Grows in the Navigation District”
