After reading another thread that I found really inspiring and got my mind going I thought I would start another as I do not want to hijack the other thread.
Mark I do hope you post more as I would like to add this scene to my own layout. It would be great hidden in the woods in a corner or to only be seen from outside throw the window in my train room. I’ve had that idea for years and it has been hiding in the recesses of my mind. Maybe a single street light on a back road some where just to light the scene up when running trains at night.
When I was growing up you could find scenes like that all over the south. Just a few years ago while driving on a back road, I spotted an old liquor store at a cross roads in the middle of no where. A “huge” little brown jug, type of structure about 20 feet round and 25 feet tall. It was outrages to see it just setting there like that with the weeds growing up around it. I thought to myself “That giant is going to miss that jug soon”. Must have been a 40,000 gallon jug. Now I wish I would have had the time and a camera to get just one picture of it.
Come to think of it there are a lot of odd structures that were built in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s as the highway’s of the US where getting better and more and more places had to get the travelers to stop as they went driving by. A huge elephant some where out west comes to mind and the huge guy holding tires.
Were cooking with steam now.
What odd and interesting structures do you remember or have seen?
In Denver they built a new high-ocupancy vehicle lane next to and by-passing the Park Avenue viaduct. It went right over and beside the old “Denver Boiler Company”. In the back yard of this building was a wonderful sort of junk yard where the boiler company had been throwing stuff for years and years. The center piece was a 1948 or so 2 ton truck. It was great. I kept meaning to get a picture of it.
Well, about two years ago they went in and cleaned it all up. Nothing but scrubby weeds and a chain link fence with barb wire on the top around it now. Drat!
They are also building a new part of an oil refinery over an old railroad oil loading doc in Commerce City. I had meant for years to get photos of that too… double drat.
You may be thinking of “Lucy”. She’s at the Jersey shore.[:)] Dont for get the hotdog and donut shaped eateries - The Brown Derby in Hwood, Oscar Meyer Hotdog stands & truck - etc., etc. My [2c]
There’s a Kaiser Refractories plant somewhere near Columbiana, OH, which is interesting as it LOOMS out of the gently rolling rural landscape like a gargantuan Borg cube, as you’re driving down 11. There’s lots of other neat stuff on that highway, like a huge coal power plant that straddles the road, and a steel mill across the river with a very long, narrow, private highway bridge to it.
There was once a brewery in Meadville, PA which could almost make a backdrop flat if modeled to scale. It sat against a steep hill, and was tall, wide, and very shallow. If FSM made it as a kit I’d complain it wasn’t realistic. I think it was the “City Brg. Co.”
Meadville also had a modestly sized but comprehensive locomotive shop complex that would be quite modelable. A lot is now gone, but the roundhouse was a clapboard structure. We don’t see many wooden roundhouses modeled, but I don’t think they were that rare.
This same city now has a very surreal sewage plant. It has a giant open tank right by the highway…adorned with faux windows sporting shutters and flowerboxes. It’s like a Dali painting.
When you start going into older, hilly cities like Pittsburgh, it almost seems like the ordinary becomes exceptional. Every building has some weird feature to adapt it to the uncooperative landscape. Pgh. has had lots of cool bridges close together, too, such as the awesomely hideous 1877 “Point Bridge” (gone since the 1920s)
Finally, there is the Ypsilanti water tower. Google is your friend.
In Weeky Watchey(SP?) Florida, I remember an old gas station. (Sinclair?) The building itself was actually shaped like a huge dinosaur.
Something of interest that’s really cool to see is a rotary coal car dumper at a power plant. I remember seeing one as a kid and being amazed by it. I sat and watched it for hours.
Pre WWII, there was a franchise gas station chain, Tancar (or Tankar) Stations, that had a standard railroad tank car with the center (except for the dome) cut out and a concrete block office about 8 feet wide inserted there. If there was space behind the car, the concrete block structure took on a T shape, with storage for lube oil and supplies to the rear The pump island was in the usual place. I believe the actual storage tanks for gasoline were below ground.
One of the model railroad mags had a how to build this article - about half a century ago.
Although not a structure, during a very recent trip I found that the interstate at Gillette Wyoming had a coal fired power plant on one side and a coal mine on the other. Make a good scene, replace the I-State with your railroad of choice.
The dinosaur at Wall Drug, SD, not to mention the Jackelope inside.
In the early ‘90s I used to paint lines on Oregon roads so I traveled to a lot of obscure nooks and crannies. On a county road, out in the middle of nowhere, someone carved a 12’ or 15’ tall bear out of a tree trunk with a chainsaw.
One of my favorites, the Union Tank Car facility in Wood River, IL, now Millenium Rail:
I toured the facility while in school. It is so big, it actually rained inside the building. I also played in the scrapyard there. I still have a gas mask, and several neat rubber gaskets, from the place. [:-^]
That’s it! I used to live in a neighborhood 2 miles up the road from it. (The Heather) I remember someone telling me it used to be a Sinclair station. [%-)]
Well, there is a lot of more or less weird roadside statues and suchlike here and there. Four I’ve seen is:
In Norway, Illinois, someone had placed a small crashed two engined airplane on its nose in a field by the road, and put up a sign dedicating it to “all farmers and Ag related business folks that have lived thru the ‘Agricultural Crash’ of the 1980’s.” http://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2093
In Alexandria, Minnesota, there is Big Ole the huge viking, put up in support of an - umm - interesting … claim about Alexandria being “the birth place of America” and was visited by vikings way back.
I’ve seen that pink elephant a bunch of times - but I don’t remember it being near a road - as a matter of fact I don’t remember much about them at all . . . . .
When I was driving on I-81 thru southwestern Virginia, I saw a modern-style water tower painted to look like a hot-air balloon. Can’t remember the name of the town though…
