Why street running?

[DSchmitt]

In Long Beach Washington the Ilwaco Railway and Navigation Company 3' gauge main line ran down the middle of the main business street. The street was very narrow. The curbs of the wood sidwalks was about a foot off the edge of the ties on each side of the track.  There was no room for wagons and autos. See photos at bottom of link. There is another photo looking straight down the street in the book - The Railroad that Ran By The Tide byRaymond J. Feagans     

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Beach,_Washington
  

 

[7j43k]

And here we have street running in a city (Oakland, CA):

 

 

 

 

And freight:

 

 

 

 

Ed

[ricktrains4824]

Norfolk Southern had some street running in Erie, Pa, due to a little issue that the predecessor railroad had, having a issue with the city when they laid tracks. They were denied a right of way by the city leaders, so, they laid rails from both sides up to the city limits. Then they waited until a Sunday morning, when all the courts were closed, and blitzed through the downtown area laying tracks down the middle of 19th st. The city could do nothing about it, as by the time the courts opened on Monday morning, trains were rolling.

They were finally removed from service when, as a concession for CSX getting the Conrail (ex NYC) line, NS was permitted to use the line through downtown Erie via a connection on each side of town.

[jecorbett]

wjstix

In general, street running for freight railroads existed either because the city was there first, and the railroad found it easier to run in the street than to buy and tear down hundreds of buildings to build their own right-of-way, or because the geography of the area didn't allow enough room for both streets and a separate railroad right-of-way.

Fun fact: In Minneapolis-St.Paul, during winter the old Twin City Lines streetcar co. had to plow the entire street for any streets that had streetcar trackage in it. It was part of their contract with the cities.

 

I have the vaguest memories of riding the streetcar down 40th St in Omaha and a little more vivid memory of the street being plowed up  to remove those tracks. My best guess is this would have been around 1955 when I was 3-4 years old.

Edit: I decided to research the year Omaha streetcar service ended. I looked through many articles before I found one that said it ended in 1952. I have my doubts because I would have been too young to remember a streetcar then. Another article seemed to infer it ended in 1955 but didn't state that definitively.

[caldreamer]

The Southern Pacific now Union  Pacific line in Santa Cruz California runs down the middle of  the street through downtown.

[wjstix]

In general, street running for freight railroads existed either because the city was there first, and the railroad found it easier to run in the street than to buy and tear down hundreds of buildings to build their own right-of-way, or because the geography of the area didn't allow enough room for both streets and a separate railroad right-of-way.

Fun fact: In Minneapolis-St.Paul, during winter the old Twin City Lines streetcar co. had to plow the entire street for any streets that had streetcar trackage in it. It was part of their contract with the cities.

[zstripe]

The Engine's horn really gets a work-out in this job....they still switch this area, to this day. Check out other's, on the side:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYrCa1muguc

Take Care! 

Frank

[jecorbett]

BRAKIE

Here's the  variation of street running here in in Bucyrus,Ohio that Tom mention. Today NS runs tank trains over this line as well as the CF&E local and a CSX grain train...

And yes,you can drive down that lane in the  right side of the photo..

This was PRR's Ft.Wayne Line between Crestline and Ft. Wayne.

 

 

Be sure to yield when turning left.

[doctorwayne]

Here's some more street running, in Brownsville, PA in August of 2014.  Obviously not just a couple of loads for a local coal dealer:

...and the removeable panels to facilitate track maintenance:

Wayne

[dinwitty]

The early days of Railroading that was THE transportation technology. It was mostly horse and buggy time, roads were not the same as today, most cars had the large Horse and buggy like wheels to get thru all them dusty gravely dirty muddy roads the horses clopped along on. Many streetcar lines (note street...car...) had a stronger responsibility maintaining the streets may had trolley cars with spinning brushes, and water cars spraying the street down. For the streetcar the track used girder rail and was built solid. So for many areas of towns the railroads went right thru the streets because that was the way of life. It brought in passengers, helped the economics. Right now the situation for the South Shore in Michigan City is the street running as its on of the last major street runnings for an interurban around. The South Shore has live signaling thru town, and what happens during the winter the road trucks spraying salt would get into the rails and cause false red signals so the trains have to crawl thru town. They have finally decided to do the double tracking thru town and get the rails off the streets and not destroy any historical buildings, but it will more or less single lane 11th street and one way it.. But regular streetcar lines did not have signals, they obeyed the traffic signals, but some signals like the Nachod signal used overhead contacts to control the signals than rely on railed detected signals, that avoided the saltied up tracks issue. The streetcar builders knew what they had to do and lay down reliable track in the streets, they werent about to have to pull up the street every so often to maintain it, it was built solid.

[Ray Dunakin]

Steven, that foam street looks great!

[BRAKIE]

Here's the  variation of street running here in in Bucyrus,Ohio that Tom mention. Today NS runs tank trains over this line as well as the CF&E local and a CSX grain train...

And yes,you can drive down that lane in the  right side of the photo..

This was PRR's Ft.Wayne Line between Crestline and Ft. Wayne.

 

[G Paine]

For some information on street running, take a look at "The Railroad that came out at Night". It is about railroad in Boston that could not service industries during the day due to traffic congestion. They did their work in the middle of the night

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=the+railroad+that+came+out+at+night

It is out of print, but Amazon has a few copies

[Steven S]

If you're planning to model the Chicago/Milwaukee area, here's a site called Chicago Switching..

http://chicagoswitching.com/

 

For pavement, black craft foam (EVA foam) with gray craft paint sponged on works well.  If you use 1mm foam on Code 100 track the foam can go the full width between the rails without interfering with the wheel flanges.  Stores like Michael's or Hobby Lobby only sell 2mm foam or thicker.  An eBay seller named Wandy-Foam carries 1mm foam. (You might send him and e-mail and ask if he can sell you longer pieces than the 12" x 18" pieces he sells at his eBay shop in order to reduce the number of seams.)

 

 

You can use a kitchen sponge to dab the paint on.  Make sure the sponge doesn't have a pattern embossed on it.  I put some paint on a foam meat tray, dabbed the sponge in it, and then dabbed it on a piece of cardboard a few times to spread it around evenly on the sponge.  Then start dabbing it onto the craft foam.

To make the darker regions where the cars drive I took a smaller piece of clean damp sponge and dabbed in on the EVA foam to remove some of the paint.

To make patches you can tear or cut out the patch, then rinse off some of the paint under the faucet.

For large craacks you can just tear the foam.  For smaller cracks I chucked a straight pin into a Dremel and then etched them in.

 

 

Steve S

[ACY Tom]

Amtrak passenger trains and CSX mainline freights still go down the middle of the street in the median in Ashland, VA and Rocky Mount, NC.  I've heard it said that the coming of the railroad was considered a great thing in the days when these lines were built, and the communities were happy to share the road with the trains.  The roads may have been unpaved back then. Variations on this theme can be found in Bucyrus, Ohio, Sunbury, PA, and other places. I am aware of street trackage where the tracks are embedded in the pavement in Marietta, Ohio, and other locations.  As far as I know, none of these examples has a traction origin.

Tom

[BRAKIE]

In some cases the town grew up around the railroad and streets ran close to the tracks and maybe for a hefty tax break the railroad allowed the cities to widen the streets as cars,buses and trucks got wider.

The short line (a lot of the railroads bought these short lines to gain access to larger cities,another division or to a connecting road or through mergers) that may have own the track originally agreed to a right of way.

Main line street running isn't all that uncommon today.

[West Coast S]

Or is some case valuable land precluded a dedicated right of way, PE served a citrus packing customer via street trackage that was necessary as pre-exsting orange groves occupied all available acreage.

Dave 

[mlehman]

In the case of the North Shore, it was in the street because it ran...streetcars!

Or interurbans, as the case may be with the North Shore.

Many traction operations simply added freight service and utilized existing ROW by branching off of it as needed. Frequently in dense areas, freight moved at night, because people didn't so much. The longer trains vs the trolleys tied up traffic more, so better they roamed at night.

And some electric freight ops continued after the wire came down or they were absorbed by a freight RR. They simply operated what they inherited.

[Metro Red Line]

Myriad reasons:

1. In urban areas, there's not much room for a traditional rail right-of-way

2. Similarly, development, topography, other obstacles limit rail access

3. Freight railroad most likely acquired old traction railroad company, which had most of its lines as street trackage

4. For some industries, this is the only way to access them

 

[jecorbett]

I'm working on the last section of my RR and plan to have a short section where the track runs down a street. I remember way back in 1959 riding the North Shore from Chicago to Milwaukee and our train stopping for traffic lights when we got into Milwaukee. I thought it would be a neat feature to have.

The recent issue of RMC had an article about the maintenance problems with street trackage in the prototype world. Given that and the logisitics of moving trains over city streets it made me wonder why prototype railroads did that. I'm guessing that the city streets were laid out before the railroad came to town and the only available right of way to get in and out of town was to go down the city streets. Is there more to it than that?

In any case I think it is one more example of something that was a headache to the real railroads but an interesting feature for the modeler.