Pop industrial architecture question

[sirenwerks]

Growing up around Baltimore, I'm used to railroads meandering along small rivers, running through tight valleys hemmed in by steep tree-d hillsides with plenty of rock outcroppings.  It makes for quintessential (model) railroading but hell on locating industries in such locales.  Given the geology, industries around my hometown - Ellicott City, Maryland - ended up planting themselves on the opposing side of the river and either bridged the river to reach a siding themselves, or coaxed the railroad to hop the river for them.  Again, in my hometown, not a large place at all, there's a sizable flour mill where the B&O built a two-span truss bridge to reach its loading docks, and that mill is bracketed by a former furniture manufacturer that bridged the river to a loading platform and what eventually became a paper recycling plant that received chemical shipments across the Patapsco, that were piped across the river.  And there are more examples in Baltimore.  Such as this mill that is in the process of being condo-ized:



I've seen this solution to reaching the tracks elsewhere in the Mid Atlantic too.  But the Mid-Atlantic grew up early and had a high population density crammed into packed towns and cities and craggy Appalachian scenery, where there was less build-able property to be had, before America spread out onto the plains and west, where there is big sky and the industrial booms of communities were better timed to expansive availability of land.  I'm kinda making things up when it comes to planning industries and I like the jauntiness but I don't want to step too far out of prototype.

So my question is how prevalent is this means of bridging the gap elsewhere across the country?  Especially on the Washington/Oregon coast?  Chicagoland? 

[C855B]

... how prevalent is this means of bridging the gap elsewhere across the country?  Especially on the Washington/Oregon coast?  Chicagoland?

Not very. Railroads mostly determined the settlement patterns going West simply because they were 100% of the infrastructure, or nearly so. Plus the railroads controlled most of the land. Then there's the topography, where rivers are not as much a way of life. There's lots of flat.

When we do have to deal with rivers (think Ohio, Mississippi, Missouri and Columbia Rivers), they are too broad or deep to economically span for a single entity - these are not your typical "mill rivers" that have well-defined channels and can be bridged with one or two truss spans. In most cases a new industry, even near the river, would justify construction of a branch or spur connection to the nearest mainline on its side of the river, at a tiny fraction of the cost over some form of viaduct.

[sirenwerks]

And that was pretty much my thinking too.  By the time westward expansion hits, the railroads are operating through the federal land grants, which provides ample amounts of trackside land, not too mention personal land grabbing provided for larger individually-owned plots that would eventually be up for sale for trackside development.  Those aspects, combined with the difference in western v. eastern river topography, would mean significantly less of such industrial solution; except, perhaps, in scenarios where development becomes dense and the size of an industry could not justify a branch.  And then only in places where a river could be bridged.  In such instances, I would think maybe in larger communities (Chicago, Milwaukee, Twin Cities, Tacoma, Spokane, maybe some smaller scale cities in the west coast in confined locales with narrow waterways...) such a design solution might occur. 

Maybe I should just stick with more prototype research and leave less to the imagination.

[Denver Road Doug]

You *might* see that in some cases in the Chicago area.

The BEST example I can come up with "out West" is more modern, and that is anything dealing with Powder River coal.   Some crazy infrastructure both at the mine areas and at the power plants...dedicated bridges, etc.   And in some cases, multiple bridges from multiple railroads.

[C855B]

^^^ - Yeah, what Doug said. I was going to note that as an exception - coal access and big coal-fired power plants were/are outside our "bridge to an industry" model, albeit mostly modern era. But coal movement nearly qualifies as mainline. Anything over, say ~50,000 tons a day for X years is going to be worth the hundred$ of million$ in civil engineering work.

[wazzou]

Spokane was the only example I have familiarity with, though I'm sure in LA along the LA River there are/were examples.

This link takes you to a then/now example of Spokane, prior and post Expo '74.  There is a slider at the bottom of the image where you can toggle full photo between the two eras.

http://www.spokesman.com/then-and-now/aerial-spokane-river/

[parkrrrr]

It's not a very good example, but http://goo.gl/maps/fKX1q
In the upper right you can see a vine-covered bridge spanning Spy Run Creek. To the left, where the power lines run along the edge of the soccer field, was the NYC mainline. The bridge carried a siding to what was then part of the city power plant (the boiler house of the power plant still exists to the south.)

[C855B]

... along the LA River there are/were examples. ...

Actually, not that I can recall. (I grew-up in the L.A. area.)

If you'll look at a modern map, there are significant branchlines paralleling both sides of the river. The handful of bridges link the two, or are pure mainline or heavy branchline crossings. These lines have been there since the early days, most developed by the Pacific Electric, some by Santa Fe. So there was no need for individual industries to bridge the river, they had tracks on their side already, and from nearly the beginning of serious development.

[wazzou]

I guess I was speaking in a more broad sense of bridges in general, not necessarily industry access.  The same could be said for the Spokane example.

[sirenwerks]

By bridge I mean specifically to reach an industry.  Like this, which is the flour mill I spoke of earlier, in Ellicott City:



That's a light, three-span bridge crossing the Patapsco.  At the other end of the bridge is the B&O's Old Main Line - there used to be two tracks for switching, the bridge lead, and a two track mainline.  Only one track of the main remains, the rest having slid into the river in the 70s during hurricane Agnes.

About 100 yards west, and here's the furniture factory I mentioned.  Actually, it looks from the remainder of the bridge abutment that there used to be a track across the river here two, not a human/cargo bridge as I speculated.  There is the remains of a loading dock and where there was a two track yard on the mainline side of the river here too, so maybe there were both over the life of the factory.  Between this factory and the flour mill there used to run the #9 trolley line from Baltimore which crossed the river and then ducked under the OML.



A few football fields east and here's the plant that ended up being a recycling center.  The red blotch between the trackside structure and the track is an insulated tank, and there are the remains of two (?) other tanks in the trees to the right of there; and there's a piping bridge leading over the river.  This mill was recently torn down.  To the right is the Ilchester bridge, the prototype for TrainCat's first bridge model.



And these examples are all within hiking distance of the house I grew up in, so they're kinda engraved in my head as normal.

[wazzou]

Nope...haven't seen anything like that.   

[nkalanaga]

The Washington and Oregon coasts didn't have much in the way of railroads or industries, except fishing and logging.  Well into the early 1900s much of their lumber and fish were still shipped by coastal freighters.  Too much of the coast was too hard to reach through the Coast Range mountains, as there are few rivers through them.  Gray's Harbor, Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia, Tillamook and Toledo, OR, and the area southwest of Eugene OR are about the only places on the Northwest coast with rail service.  The northern Olympic Peninsula also had railroads, but that isn't, technically, on the Pacific coast.

[Pennsy]

And as far as the Midwest is concerned Chicago, St Louis, etc. Land was too cheap further out to make building expansion/infrastructure in already developed areas economical for any substantial industry. And older existing plants where situated to take advantage of rail lines already, such as the Chicago stock yards.
I'm not sure of Detroit or other rust belt cities though. While the cities there where older and predated the railroads. Most of the development of those industries did coincide with the railroads. And again better land was available too.

Jim

PS thanks for the various maps and such. I grabbed a few pictures for modeling purposes

[randgust]

My all-time favorite for wacky track and spur situations is Lowell, MA - because the city grew up before the railroad got there and was laced with canals.  As a late-arrival, B&M had to put track down alleys, bridge canals on curves, have hairpin curves, and in one situation had a turntable inside a building to change directions 90-degrees.    Much of the rail (but not the business) can still be found in back alleys and I have a 1900-era map of the city showing the track in detail.  The legacy of all that is Lowell National historical park; the streetcar line was original B&M freight track and it's tight enough!   The current streetcar repair shop was a B&M coal pocket spur that dived across the canal into the side of the building and came in on the second story.

Not sure it fits your situation; PM me if you want more detail.

Jamestown, NY (Erie) had and has a couple winners; there's one of those 'you'd only see it on a model railroad' where a dead-end industrial siding crossed to the north side of the Chadakoin Creek in Jamestown on a through girder bridge, and there was only room for 1-2 cars when it got there.  Plant is still there; bridge is gone, ROW still visible on Google Earth; look north from Blackstone Ave toward 2nd (394). 

Another favorite is (was) the Dahlstrom building (Buffalo & 2nd) where the railroad was on an embankment above the plant, it came inside the complex on an elevated trestle on the second story and had boxcar loading and a coal pocket 20' off of the ground, and a girder bridge inside the building as it spanned the creek - the entire brick four-story complex was built over the creek on piers (which literally, led to its actual downfall).

A little further west, the original AVM building was lower than the main, so they built a freight elevator system up to their spur off of the Erie, and a coal pocket trestle beside it; one of the few places I've ever seen a boxcar loading dock ON a coal trestle and this wacky way of getting outbound freight up to siding.

A third is Savannah, GA, on River St - the brick 1850's cotton warehouses were there long before the railroad, and a spur was built down a winding alley behind the warehouses no wider than the cars - Factors Walk.  It shows on the val maps, you can't believe there was EVER a siding down through there dodging in and out.  Similarly, there was a siding (accessible only by street railroad) to the power plant that came down a 7% grade on MLK, hard curve at the bottom, and two carlengths before it stopped abruptly on the riverbank.  No idea how it was run without killing somebody or putting cars in the river, but it shows on the maps.

[sirenwerks]

Another favorite is (was) the Dahlstrom building (Buffalo & 2nd) where the railroad was on an embankment above the plant, it came inside the complex on an elevated trestle on the second story and had boxcar loading and a coal pocket 20' off of the ground

Not sure what the structure was, but there's a similar gig in DC - a second story siding crossing 1st Street on a girder bridge out of Union Station.  The building's face at that wall is beveled to receive the bridge at a 90 degree angle, and the bridge has a switch on it, so the siding entering the building is two tracks.  It may be part of the post office complex, but it's not REA related.  Since the building's only a 1/4 block wide, the two tracks almost fill that floor.  Not sure how far into the building they extended though.