SP's East Portland "Produce Row"

[Hawghead]

Peter,

This is really looking great.  As someone who takes trains through this area almost every day, the pictures of the different parts of your layout look very familiar to me.  Almost all of the industries or the tracks that once served them are gone now, but looking at the different parts of your layout I find myself thinking, Oh, that's what used to be there.

Scott

[sirenwerks]

Hmmm...stop in Vegas, only 1111 miles from my house....I might have to pass....how about the Orange Empire Railway Museum?

Is Arizona even on the West Coast? When I lived in NM it associated itself with the Southwest, so I kinda associated it with not being on a coast at all, and I don't think Lakes Mead or Havusa constitute a coast

[CRL]

If the big one ever hits, folks in Arizona will be sticking pry bars into the Colorado River trying to lever California into the ocean.

[sirenwerks]

If the big one ever hits, folks in Arizona will be sticking pry bars into the Colorado River trying to lever California into the ocean.

The Big One is a myth in regards to California. Yes, it will have big earthquakes, but an earthquake the full length of the San Andreas is pretty much a non-starter.


That will occur, however, along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The CSZ runs along the coast from BC down Washington and Oregon to Humboldt County CA. It's estimated there will be a 6' or so drop in land elevations along that coast when another major event happens. That may drop parts of some towns into the water.


The details are fuzzy at the moment, but I remember reading about one town in Italy that is on a subduction zone, where there's an ancient port that's been lifted by subduction about 30' above the modern town, which is now at sea level. That's the power of plate tectonics.


The fact is that the majority of California is not on a subduction zone to make your fantasy a reality. Keep wishing if you want, but your fantasy is not based on science/reality.
[/size]
[/size]You might want to focus your attention instead on the unnamed fault near Duncan, which last produced a magnitude 5.3, and is part of the Northern Arizona Seismic Belt, which runs from Flagstaff to Utah, and includes dozens of other unnamed active faults. Or the Lake Mary Fault just south of Flagstaff, capable of a magnitude of 7; or the Hurricane Fault, also in northern Arizona, capable of a 7.5 magnitude; or the Algodones Fault in southwestern Arizona (6.6 magnitude), the Big Chino Fault in central Arizona (7 magnitude), the Safford Fault in eastern Arizona (6.5 magnitude), or the Santa Rita Fault southeast of Tucson (7 magnitude). Who knows, maybe Arizona will become an inland sea again and solve LA and the Central Valley's water problems?

[johnb]

Is Arizona even on the West Coast? When I lived in NM it associated itself with the Southwest, so I kinda associated it with not being on a coast at all, and I don't think Lakes Mead or Havusa constitute a coast

it's South West, but a lot closer to you than the ConRail guys

[CRL]

The Big One is a myth in regards to California. Yes, it will have big earthquakes, but an earthquake the full length of the San Andreas is pretty much a non-starter.


That will occur, however, along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. The CSZ runs along the coast from BC down Washington and Oregon to Humboldt County CA. It's estimated there will be a 6' or so drop in land elevations along that coast when another major event happens. That may drop parts of some towns into the water.


The details are fuzzy at the moment, but I remember reading about one town in Italy that is on a subduction zone, where there's an ancient port that's been lifted by subduction about 30' above the modern town, which is now at sea level. That's the power of plate tectonics.


The fact is that the majority of California is not on a subduction zone to make your fantasy a reality. Keep wishing if you want, but your fantasy is not based on science/reality.
[/size]
[/size]You might want to focus your attention instead on the unnamed fault near Duncan, which last produced a magnitude 5.3, and is part of the Northern Arizona Seismic Belt, which runs from Flagstaff to Utah, and includes dozens of other unnamed active faults. Or the Lake Mary Fault just south of Flagstaff, capable of a magnitude of 7; or the Hurricane Fault, also in northern Arizona, capable of a 7.5 magnitude; or the Algodones Fault in southwestern Arizona (6.6 magnitude), the Big Chino Fault in central Arizona (7 magnitude), the Safford Fault in eastern Arizona (6.5 magnitude), or the Santa Rita Fault southeast of Tucson (7 magnitude). Who knows, maybe Arizona will become an inland sea again and solve LA and the Central Valley's water problems?

So basically you’re saying they will need bigger pry bars.

[pdx1955]

Finally got motivated again to work on this. I had some cat damage that pretzeled one of my mainline crossovers (this has yet to be fixed - you can see it on the far left) , but it gave me some opportunity to figure out the details for this local area once I broke out of my mini-funk. I found some more pictures relating to the waterfront industries (General Grocery Co., Hudson-Duncan Co, and the Municipal Terminal Dock warehouse) which I matched up to my maps and other resources and put some more puzzle pieces together. I went back and forth on how to potential handle the modeling of these, but in the end, I resorted to keeping things simple.

I was already planning to put up free-standing flats for the city side of the pennisula, so I am working on creating a "bump-out" to add a few inches so I can add the cold storage building for the Hudson-Duncan Co. (the local Piggly Wiggly grocery distributor) and the General Grocery Co (paper, canned goods, coffee grinding/roasting) as flats on the river side. The dock warehouse is too big to add into this compressed scene.

I will realign and extend the spur (seen on the far right side of the image) north to both of these which follows the prototype. This extended spur will also cross Oak Street which can be seen in the picture. I had originally planned to add crossing flashers here, but considering the cost of the controllers plus extra detectors for the spur and the mainline crossover, I decided to just put wig-wags here for crossing this street stub which will still look good but a "back-date" for this location. All of this work also will finalized the building flat design (this had been stalled for some time) for the NW Ice and & Cold Storage Co which is in the corner just off to the right of the picture. I'll do the crossover fix when I do the spur work.

[Hawghead]

Peter,

Good to see you working on this again, I'm looking forward to seeing more.

Scott

[pdx1955]

Got some more work done today with the cutting in of the NW Ice & Cold Storage switch and completion of the spur. I also got pretty far along on the actual building construction itself save for the roof and side walls. The mainline crossover feline damage was repaired and the new switch wired in. I'll repaint the track (and paint the building) when it gets warmer and more conducive to spray painting. I plan to taper the curved spur cork down to the base once the glue dries, so that there is more of a height differential between it and the adjacent mainline.

[CRL]

Cat damage?

As in catastrophic, or as in Meow?

[pdx1955]

As "Meow"... Apparently, our big male cat showed his displeasure by using my trackwork as a scratching post. I bent to their demands and replaced the cat tower with a newer better model with plenty of fresh sisal. Since then, all issues have ceased.

[OldEastRR]

Glad to see more this layout news --- I'm not a fan of big layouts but somehow like this one because it seems like a lot of small switching layouts put together.
I'd like to see drawings/schematics of alterations to layouts. Don't really have a visualization of something like "free-standing flats with a bump-out" -- what the hell does that look like?

Also this thread now reminds me I haven't posted any work done on my layout for over a year. Tho I have been working on it...

[pdx1955]

Here's some visualizations that should help. For the "bump-out" this idea originated from a MR article on creating mini-peninsulas to better improve the scenery or operational aspects in a local area without going into a large expansion. My ROW needs to stay on one-half of the garage to allow a potential car. A good example of this is immediately north where I had a wharf along the edge of the layout. Later I thought it would look better if I had a ship there so you can see where the edge bends out to accommodate a freighter.



This latest bump-out is just a piece of 1x4 cut down to about 2.5 " cantilevered with pieces of 2x2 off the side of the layout. In this next picture, I'm using the taskboard core of the Hudson-Duncan building to show about how the General Grocery building would look like since both are two stories and of similar size. The layout side would be finished, but the aisle side would just be black and flush with fascia (probably just a piece of foamcore filling it in).



There would be free-standing flats in the center aisle just across this scene as well. Here, I've positioned the same core in this area. I had built a shelf into the layout so these flats would block that view of any coffee cups etc . These buildings will be twice as tall but there also will be the six-lane east approach of the Burnside Bridge as mocked up by the basswood sticks. This way the viewer will have more vertical elements from either side of the layout where I can't have backdrops to help bolster the "urban canyon" visuals.

[Hawghead]

Peter,

I like the way the layout is coming along.  I do have one question though.  Seeing as this is Portland, how do plan on modeling the rain? 

Scott

[pdx1955]

Peter,

I like the way the layout is coming along.  I do have one question though.  Seeing as this is Portland, how do plan on modeling the rain? 

Scott

I'm gonna cheat and model late summer to avoid the puddles (however a layout set on a drippy day would be neat- could be a good T-trak module idea). Although, my backdrops do indicate a good amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere and potential instability with the cumulus clouds, so who knows ?