Whacky Signs.

[Kingzance]

45 minutes ago, martin_wynne said:

Lost?

 

http://img.radioparadise.com/slideshow/720/6943.jpg

I must have driven past that heading from Palm Springs to LA!

[Ozexpatriate]

1 hour ago, Kingzance said:

I must have driven past that heading from Palm Springs to LA!

Las Vegas to LA perhaps? Palm Springs is on I-10.

[PhilJ W]

6 hours ago, martin_wynne said:

 

Thanks!

 

As a destination it is a bit lacking:

 

 https://goo.gl/maps/3c2pUkKPw88KJB9a6

 

Martin.

Follow the road south and it ends at the California University Desert Research Centre.

[Ramblin Rich]

2 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

Follow the road south and it ends at the California University Desert Research Centre.

Bit of a dry subject though

Edited May 21, 2019 by Ramblin Rich
typo

[TEAMYAKIMA]

 

A warning to all trainspotters …………...

 

Edited May 21, 2019 by TEAMYAKIMA

[melmerby]

I'm trying to work out what the graphic is showing

[Ozexpatriate]

1 minute ago, melmerby said:

I'm trying to work out what the graphic is showing

Tossing evidently.

 

Of the letter "T".

[J. S. Bach]

ZZYZX Rd? Well, in Kentucky, how about:

 

"Lick" is another name for creek or stream.

Edited May 22, 2019 by J. S. Bach

[Liam]

9 hours ago, melmerby said:

I'm trying to work out what the graphic is showing

 

Looks like a hammer and a pair of pliers, clearly the must have accessories for all spotters....

[Ian Morgan]

Looking at the Google view of the area around Zzyzx, I thought I could see the route of an old Railroad passing though, North to South. A little searching found it was the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, that closed in the 1940's. Fascinating how easy it can be to lose yourself in the meandering World Wide Web, following tenuous links.

 

[melmerby]

31 minutes ago, Ian Morgan said:

Looking at the Google view of the area around Zzyzx, I thought I could see the route of an old Railroad passing though, North to South. A little searching found it was the Tonopah and Tidewater Railroad, that closed in the 1940's. Fascinating how easy it can be to lose yourself in the meandering World Wide Web, following tenuous links.

 

I wonder whether the aforementioned RaIlroad had a station at Zzyzx?

 

Only a University could call a place Zzyzx!

[Ian Morgan]

It was called 'Soda Springs' when the railroad was running, and renamed soon after closure by the guy that opened a Mineral Springs and Health Spa there.

 

Check it out on Wiki

Edited May 22, 2019 by Ian Morgan
Added Wiki link

[martin_wynne]

 

see: https://goo.gl/maps/EUfafrEyuDsTwDN79

 

Edited May 24, 2019 by martin_wynne
link added

[melmerby]

1 hour ago, martin_wynne said:

 

see: https://goo.gl/maps/pp2HhP3ef3h7xKaa7

 

If you look at it on Google Earth a "dump" would be overstating it!

All the streets have 4 digit house numbers, even though they only have maybe twenty houses in them!

[PhilJ W]

1 hour ago, martin_wynne said:

 

see: https://goo.gl/maps/pp2HhP3ef3h7xKaa7

 

 

2 minutes ago, melmerby said:

If you look at it on Google Earth a "dump" would be overstating it!

All the streets have 4 digit house numbers, even though they only have maybe twenty houses in them!

And all the citizens are related to each other, several times over.

[Two_sugars]

Duelling Banjos?  

[Ozexpatriate]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

All the streets have 4 digit house numbers, even though they only have maybe twenty houses in them!

It's curious that you made that observation. I don't know whether it is relevant in Santa Barbara County, but lots of counties have a street numbering system laid out on a grid - even if the streets themselves don't follow a grid.

Where I live there are at least as many as five digits. (My house has four, my old place five.) Addresses city wide (spanning multiple counties) are divided into quadrants - NW, SW, SE and NE (plus a bonus N 'quadrant'.)  These go between the number and the street name. Downtown Portland represents the datum. The further you are away from downtown, the bigger the number. The last two digits are reserved for a distance representing a standard city block. Addresses between NE 9th Ave and NE 10th Ave would be in the 900 -  999 range for an E/W street in the NE quadrant.

 

A virtual grid is applied - even when the numbered streets are not present, so 9999 would be located right before the location of 100th street even if there isn't a 100th street.  In the suburbs where there are bigger gaps between roads you might find SW 124th Ave be the next intersection after SW 115th Ave. (In Portland proper, generally speaking, Avenues run N/S and Streets run E/W.)

 

My house in Illinois was similar, except in the county there where I lived, the virtual blocks were bigger (using three digits for the block address) and the first plat started at 0, so my address on a N/S street was formatted 0N123. The next plat north would be formatted 1N123. The datum was the county offices. The first 'block' on the east side would see E/W street numbers formatted as 0E123. That format is unusual. Street numbers with several digits is not.

 

A named residence (without a number) is highly unusual. Addresses in rural areas can be different again using "rural route" (a postal delivery route) as their address.

 

Edited May 23, 2019 by Ozexpatriate

[pH]

2 hours ago, melmerby said:

All the streets have 4 digit house numbers, even though they only have maybe twenty houses in them!

 

Not unusual in North America. Towns are often laid out ('platted') before any building is started. The layout covers the whole area which may be developed. Quite often only a part of the area is built on. The street grid is usually rectangular, divided into 'blocks' which are usually a consistent size within any one town plan, but can vary between different towns. Houses are numbered within the block, not usually in increments of one. Given the size of typical blocks, it would be very unusual to get 50 houses on one side of a street in a single block, so there are 'unused' numbers at the end of each block.

 

Our house number is 2105. We're the first house on the south side of our street in the 21st block from the western edge of the town plan. Then there's 2109, 2115, 2117, 2125, 2127, 2129 and 2133. That's the end of our block. The next house on the south side of the street is 2205, the first house in the next block.

 

So New Cuyama may have been planned as a much larger town, with only a small area of the plan - a few blocks - actually built. Those blocks would have been numbered as on the original plan, and houses numbered within those blocks as I described above, hence the 4-digit house numbers.

[pH]

3 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

(In Portland proper, generally speaking, Avenues run N/S and Streets run E/W.)

 

But that's not a general rule. In Greater Vancouver, streets run N/S and avenues E/W. And in Yakima WA, on the east side of town the N/S roads and the E/W roads are all streets, while on the west side of town, in general the N/S roads are avenues and the E/W roads are streets (!!). It makes finding Yakima Valley Trolleys, with a Greater Vancouver mindset, not the easiest task.

[melmerby]

I had noted that in some semi-rural area of the US,  roads may not be contiguous, long gaps between each piece is not unusual and the house numbering is to suit.

 

 

New Cuyama has roads, streets and avenues, randomly N/S & E/W, there didn't seem to be much of a plan as if it developed organically like UK communities.

I does say on the net it was a "Company" town developed for the petrochemical industry. It now stands in an area of fruit farming and looks like it might have changed somewhat over the years.

I did look to see whether (Old) Cuyama, a short distance away had a common street numbering, but it doesn't. The roads have different names, It does still have 4 digit numbers though for the half a dozen dwellings.

[burgundy]

Seen in Bucharest …

So much for national cuisine!

Best wishes 

Eric 

[martin_wynne]

On 21/05/2019 at 23:46, melmerby said:

I'm trying to work out what the graphic is showing

 

 

[martin_wynne]

On 21/05/2019 at 23:46, melmerby said:

I'm trying to work out what the graphic is showing

 

 

[kevinlms]

13 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

It's curious that you made that observation. I don't know whether it is relevant in Santa Barbara County, but lots of counties have a street numbering system laid out on a grid - even if the streets themselves don't follow a grid.

Where I live there are at least as many as five digits. (My house has four, my old place five.) Addresses city wide (spanning multiple counties) are divided into quadrants - NW, SW, SE and NE (plus a bonus N 'quadrant'.)  These go between the number and the street name. Downtown Portland represents the datum. The further you are away from downtown, the bigger the number. The last two digits are reserved for a distance representing a standard city block. Addresses between NE 9th Ave and NE 10th Ave would be in the 900 -  999 range for an E/W street in the NE quadrant.

 

A virtual grid is applied - even when the numbered streets are not present, so 9999 would be located right before the location of 100th street even if there isn't a 100th street.  In the suburbs where there are bigger gaps between roads you might find SW 124th Ave be the next intersection after SW 115th Ave. (In Portland proper, generally speaking, Avenues run N/S and Streets run E/W.)

 

My house in Illinois was similar, except in the county there where I lived, the virtual blocks were bigger (using three digits for the block address) and the first plat started at 0, so my address on a N/S street was formatted 0N123. The next plat north would be formatted 1N123. The datum was the county offices. The first 'block' on the east side would see E/W street numbers formatted as 0E123. That format is unusual. Street numbers with several digits is not.

 

A named residence (without a number) is highly unusual. Addresses in rural areas can be different again using "rural route" (a postal delivery route) as their address.

 

In Australia, we have a numbering system along some major highways, where it has a useful meaning.

 

A property might have a number like 2615. This means it is 26 kilometers from a known starting point. This is usually a post office at one end, or important road junction. The 15 is the sub-distance, representing 150 metres. So it's 26150 metres from the known point, approximately - certainly within 10 metres..

The idea is so that emergency services know precisely where to attend. Useful, in bushfire prone areas, so it can be found where there may be thick smoke.

Obviously, even numbers are on the other side of the road.

[Colin_McLeod]

It's easier in Co Kerry. Where I live there are no house numbers at all.  I share an address with about 20 others.  The postman knows who live in which

house.

 

 

We do have Eircode however with a different code for each individual house.