I seem to need to place a 90 degree crossing fairly close to a 60 degree crossing on a spur line I am adding where two tracks will cross it to a maintenance area.
I can't find any photos of the real thing.....of any sorts of rail lines crossing in proximity to another crossing, yet I would like to see the real thing.
I would be grateful for a link to any photos on the net....(not just a link to a photo site, mind, since I have looked through a few without success as the key word searches usually come up with level crossings rather than rail line crossings, but a link to an actual photo on a site would be helpful)
I know I have seen a pic of a 90 degree crossing on rail pics.net in the past, but I can't even find that instance of a single crossing again.
Thanks to anyone who takes the time to reply with a photo link.
Try searching using:
railroad track diamond sixty degree
Rich
If you ever fall over in public, pick yourself up and say “sorry it’s been a while since I inhabited a body.” And just walk away.
Thanks, Rich. That's the ticket. "Diamond" seems to be a good keyword, but I had not heard of it used for the crossings until now.
Diamond turned up several photos on the net.
This is cool. Here is a company that makes diamond and custom crossings for railroads. I suppose some railroads do not make their own.
http://www.centurygrp.com/Products/Railroad-Grade-Crossings/Custom-Crossings
This is partly a "bump" to keep this thread active until I can help.
I did a "photo study" of crossings in 1990, and took a batch of pictures in Houston Texas and elsewhere. But it will take time to go through that stuff. Most of it is NOT scanned, and then I will have to upload to my web photo space.
I grew up about 500 feet from this 72 degree diamond in Houston near the center of this sketch-map. It was removed before I started taking train pictures seriously.
The crossing at the far left is still there. It is 2 crossings close together simply because it is a crossing of a double-track line. But I think you meanth something else.
There were several crfossings at various angles at Houston Union Station, before what was left of the station was converted into part of Minute Maid baseball stadium for the Houston Astros.
I will look and see what I can find--but not tonight. Homework!
You often get a bump when you go over a crossing. Here I am giving a bump to a crossing thread.
You were looking for 60 degree crossings. This on if 72 degrees-- actually two diamond crossings side by side where the Union Pacific's Galveston, Houston and Henderson crosses what was then the Houston Belt and Terminal double-track East Belt line at Tower 85. (The name of the crossing. There is an interlocking but no tower building there.)
This was in 1991, when the Texas Limited ran between Houston and Galveston.
I have more crossings, but not scanned yet... Check back in a day or two.
Thanks, Leighant. There are some great photos of crossings on the web, alright.
How about this old snap for a wild bunch of crossings, turnouts and catchpoints. I imagine this would be slow going in through here.
http://www.templot.com/forum_img/padwood582.jpg
We now take you to San Antonio, an the time machine dial is set for 1988.
This crossing was already pretty much inactive. Notice the "old technology" interlocking-- a gate! This is where the MKT line into its south-edge-of-downtown station crossed the Southern Pacific/ SAAP Kerrville branch. I measured it on the map at 65 degrees.
Apache Junction, where the Southern Pacific Sunset Route and the Missouri Pacific/ IGN line to Laredo cross is 75 degrees. It is now of course all UP.
Just a few blocks south of MoPac's San Antonio depot was a 55 degree crossing, where the MoPac/IGN line past the depot heading for Laredo crossed the SP Kerrville branch. Both MoPac and SP are now part of UP, and the UP eliminated the crossing with two junctions and a single shared track for a few city blocks long.
Here is a representation of the Apache Junction crossing on the bottom of a track plan I designed and laid out on this forum a few months ago.
For a really long drawn-out discussion of this prototype and layout, see
http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/t/174821.aspx
if the old forum posts have not been all disconnectivated...
I have been looking through items in my 1990 Houston crossing study. Here are some that are 60 degrees or close...
Now I will need to see how many of these of which I have pictures.
I think I found your 90º and 60º crossings in close proximity. I was researching to make sure I had correct names and identifications before the long job of scanning, cropping, color-balancing, uploading my photos to my webspace then posting them.
I found a site with a couple of hundred railroad crossings at grade in Texas with history, explanation, large scale Sanborn's maps, historic photos and more recent photos, of each site, one by one. It is:
http://www.towers.txrrhistory.com On this site, I found Harrisburg Junction, also called Katy Neck, a few hundred feet from where my mom and dad met each other in high school in the late 1920s. A diagram showing the adjacent 90 and 60 degree crossings is at:
http://www.towers.txrrhistory.com
On this site, I found Harrisburg Junction, also called Katy Neck, a few hundred feet from where my mom and dad met each other in high school in the late 1920s.
A diagram showing the adjacent 90 and 60 degree crossings is at:
http://www.towers.txrrhistory.com/030/HouV61951-sh632-T30r.gif
This graphic is part of a page which has photos, diagrams, maps and historic explanations of the location. The entire page is at:
http://www.towers.txrrhistory.com/030/030.htm
See how this helps. The photo at this page does not clearly show the two diamonds but it gives some idea how they work. I will post this for now and probably come back when I get some of my own photos ready to show.
Doesn't anyone else have photos of real 60 degree crossings?
I went back and chcked my photos and found my "Houston Junction and Crossing Study" was in 1986. I checked the angle of the crossings from maps, GoogleEarth, etc. There were a SLEW of 60 degree crossings all close together around Tower 26 on the north side of Houston. I have not been up there lately to check.
I sketched a diagram when I shot the pics, and redrew it in Photoshop for this forum...
Tower 26 was originally at the crossing of the SP Lufkin sub (once the Houston East and West Texas) and the SP Sunset route double track. That is the crossing at the left ofn bthe diagram. My photos miss showing most of the diamonds upo close because I was trying to get the whole crossing scene. Here is a view at the "Old Tower 26" looking east-northeast towards Englewood Yard and New Orleans on the double track of the SP. Curving off to the left is the connection to the SP Lufkin line, and in the distance, the Lufkin line crosses.
Same crossing but now we are on the Lufkin line a few hundred feet north of the crossing looking south. If we stayed on this track across the crossing, we would be headed into the east end of the SP passenger station.
Now here is the actual Tower 26. A Southern Pacific train is headed west towards San Antonio crossing the Houston Belt & Terminal "Passenger Subdivision" at the tower. A couple miles to the left (south), the HB&T Passenger sub reached Union Station-- which is not there anymore-- except a remnant of the building which has been made a part of Minute Maid Stadium for the Houston Astros.
The end of the SP train (remember when they had cabooses?) passes Tower 26 and finishes crossing over the HB&T. Is that a different looking tower structure from what you see on most layouts?
Okay, at long last, here is a shot that shows the diamonds. This is "Carr", one block east of Tower 26, looking south on the HB&T Freight sub towards Congress Yard. The curving connection between the HB&T and the SP runs across the back of the picture.
Want more crossings?
Hey, thanks very much Leighant. I didn't know there was a segment of rail fans focussing on towers and crossings. I think that is very cool. I certainly can appreciate the interest in the towers and abandoned structures as railroads mature across the landscape.
Having a topic like this in railfanning and rail photography is good in that it gives a focus when one is out and about....kind of like the way hunting is so much fun as it provides a focus in a day in the wilderness and forces or induces an alertness and appreciation that just ambling around does not.
Your photos of diamonds and various crossings in proximity has been helpful in settling my mind on the appearance I will create on the layout. Of course, in modelling we can put things in proximity that cannot be so tight on a real railroad because of the radius they require. Therefore I can get my 90 degree up close to the 60, but now I also see that it can occur naturally in a real setting.
Odd, I never thought of myself as part of "a segment of rail fans focussing on towers and crossings." It was just a kick I got on for a while when I was kicking around ideas some 25 years ago for "the big dream layout," the one I now doubt I will ever build...
I was concerned with modeling interchanges and crossings between different railroads and how they work in real life. Also how in flatland south Texas there are so few grade separated rail crossings-- 2 in Houston, 1 in San Antonio, 1 near Plantersville.... Another time I was producing a one-hour video on "Traffic Simulation for a Texas Model Railroad" and I shot pictures of a bunch of businesses with industry spurs in Corpus Christi and elsewhere. Most of the small industry and warehouse spurs have been pulled up and I recently donated my local pictures to a university history archive.
Anyway, here are a couple more diamond crossings CLOSE to 60 degrees.
The first crossing and junction in Texas, Pierce Junction on the south side of Houston about three miles east of the Astrodome, near Holmes Road and Alameda. The arrow points to the diamond.
The first railroad in Texas, the Buffalo Bayou, Brazos and Colorado, built in the 1850s, became associated with the Galveston Houston and San Antonio which became part of the SP-owned Texas and New Orleans, then Southern Pacific proper and now Union Pacific. It is the track that runs right bottom corner to left middle across the picture. That road bypassed Houston proper, but the Houston Tap built to connect to it and to cross and head for Brazoria. Houston Tap and Brazoria became part of Houston and Great Northern, then International and Great Northern, then Missouri Pacific. But Houston Belt and Terminal took over the MoPac trackage within Houston and this crossing was a divide between HB&T and MoPac operation. And then with the recent mergers, surviving MoPac-owned track became UP. This is a 1986 view of a 56 degree crossing, as measured on the city street map and on GoogleEarth. I don't know if the crossing is still there...
This next one is called RABBIT CROSSING. Southern Pacific came to own a Houston to Lufkin to Shreveport line through east Texas formally named the "Houston East and West Texas." Critics claimed the initials H.E.W.T. stood for "Hell Either Way Taken." But the line was also called the Rabbit for the way it ran up and down the little hills of east Texas. The "Rabbit" is the hard-to-see line running crssways across this picture, in the shadow of the expressway.
The "Rabbit" came first, running a dozen or so degrees east of due north. Then the Houston Belt and Terminal was created in the early years of the 20th century. This was (in 1986) HB&T's East Belt Sub double track running almost east and west to cross "the Rabbit" with a 70 degree diamond.
Then in the 1950s they built the "Eastex Freeway," the portion of US 59 on the north side of Houston running into the piney woods. The overpass easily clears the HB&T tracks at an easy angle close to 90 degrees. But the "Rabbit" is almost parallel, at a sharp shallow angle. The overpass supports needed to be staggered on both sides of the rail line as it crosses both west to east and south to north at the same time.
Oops- a correction to my previous post. I was wondering if the oldest crossing and junction in Texas- Pierce Junction-- was still there. I looked it up on GoogleEarth. Yes. it was there, though partly under an elevated highway overpass. Makes it look rather different. But I misidentified the orientation of the picture.
The street running from front to back in the picture is Alameda, looking north towards downtown Houston. The railroad WAS the Houston Tap...etc exMoPac and exHB&T. The street running crosswise is Holmes Road and the railroad was the first railroad in Texas, BBB&C, later SP.
And of course, now nearly everything is Union Pacific!
Here is an interesting view from 1986-- now much changed. Collins Crossing.
The track going off in the distance to the right was the Southern Pacific Lufkin Sub., originally the Houston East and West Texas. (The “Rabbit”)
And the track going off to the left was the Houston Belt and Terminal Passenger Sub.
Angle about 24 degrees.
Since the mergers, the HB&T track was pulled up and the SP route double tracked to eliminate the crossing.
Now here is one that had gone away when I photographed it in 1986-- Bayou Crossing, on the HB&T Passenger Sub. on the north bank of Houston’s Buffalo Bayou. The HB&T used to cross the Texas Transportation Co., an in-town line owned by Southern Pacific, but it was cut here, and the crossing has been thrown aside.
I have a lot of other crossing pictures, but I guess this is a good ending place.