Here in Corpus Christi, Texas, we have a junkyard---oops, I mean metal recycling facility-- with a funny story. Back in the 1960s, developers were putting up a shopping center in a suburb and there was a bit of controversy about unsightly sterile expanses of asphalt parking lot. The developers planted palm trees around the perimeter of the parking lot with the idea they were adding to the beauty of the suburbs rather than detracting.
Anyway, in a reaction to the public discussion of beautification, one of the metal scrap yards along the Texas Mexican Railroad tracks "beautified" their location by putting up metal palm trees..... steel posts about 3 stories tall, topped with a plate steel cutout on the street side in the shape of the fronds of a palm tree. Not quite as bizarre as Texas' infamous Cadillac Ranch with the 10 Cadillacs buried nose down, but still a local point of bizarre cityscape.
A model railroader (from out of town, of course) built a scene of the junkyard with the junk-art trees. Everytime somebody sees his display at a train show and says those are the least realistic trees they have ever seen, he pulls out his prototype photo and shows how exactly his scene conforms to real life.
Oh, as to your question, I grew up in late 1940s and early 50s in Texas. Plenty of chain link fences then, and I have seen a number of railroad gates in fences. I have a railroad gate on my Navy blimp base railroad, feel it is part of the signature appearance of a military installation. Sorry that the mesh of the chain link fence is so fine, the fence is not prominent in the pictures I have taken.
http://www.railimages.com/albums/kennethanthony/aab.jpg[/img]
There is a fence along the curve just behind the "shack" building, and a gate just behind the helium tank car, just doesn't show in picture.