Industry areas

[dave1905]

Since youse guys are always looking for areas on which a switching plank can be based, on another forum we were discussing roofing shingle plants and I gave an example of such a plant.

If you go to Google Maps and search for :

 

market st and aleen st, houston, tx

 

The big white building south of Market St. is the shingle plant. It can recieved both two bay covered hoppers and boxcars. If you look closely there is a car mover positioning a covered hopper of chips under theloading shed. Since its in Houston, there is also a street level view, which lets you see the loading dock area also. The switch on the north end of the industry spur is one in the street.

 

If you look closely at the south end of the building there are lots of stacks of shingles wrapped in white plastic.

 

That whole area is an industrial park so there should be other low relief buildings in the area.

If you scroll east past the huge Busch brewery and Market St Yard, on the other side of Fidelity road is "Houston Clothing Exchange" which used to be a rag company. Its several buildings with grey roofs on the east side of Fidelity St. If you look very closely you can see a faint outline of an abandoned spur breaking off the main track coming over to those buildings. what you don't see is that that spur had a switchback along the entire end of the building facing the railroad. Its the only prototype example of a short switchback I have ever seen that was purpose built.

 

Further east past the rice dryer (grain elevator) is a long spur back to the Longhorn Glass Company. when I was there they made beer bottles, recieving silica sand in covered hoppers (some are on the spurs) and broken glass in gondolas and shipping boxcars of glassware. Some of the beer bottles went to the Busch brewery just west of the yard.