What you see on Google Street view is not always what you think!

Andy Jackson and I frequently corresponded with a modeler in Stuttgart, Germany.  All three of us were interested in the Los Angeles Junction Railway.  This was on another forum that we used before the advent of MRH.  Reinhold (the modeler from Germany) asked on that other forum "When did they level the city of Vernon and build new modern structures!?  He was using Google Street View and all of the buildings he could see looked like brand new buildings.  A few months later Reinhold and his wife took a vacation to the U. S.  Andy and I made arrangements to meet up with Reinhold while they were in So. Cal. and we spent a Saturday exploring Vernon. 

The Google Street View was taken from major streets through Vernon.  We found that many companies had used a Hollywood movie trick of putting a fancy false front on old buildings!  Park on a side street and walk back by the tracks and we discovered that the buildings with the false fronts were in fact old dilapidated buildings with rusty metal stairs and railings and peeling or missing paint in back with a fancy false front facing the main street!

The fronts of the buildings facing the main streets were often faced with polished marble, sandstone, or simply new concrete molding that gave the face character.

Using Google Globe View For Unbuilt Lines

I have just read this article in the latest MRH and this Google tool holds great promise for, in my case, research into the unbuilt Virginian Ry Kentucky Extension.

To summarise, the Crazies Group provided me with a scan of the original circa 1916 blueprint showing the key part of the route.

A quick web search showed that two of America's leading industrial trusts, USS and Berwind, were behind this venture in terms of coal mining and transport, plus the West Virginian iron-ore and smelting industry, which appears to have been out out of business through C&O rate-gouging in the mid to late 1920s.

In addition, Clinchfield Rly coal from their share of the Kentucky coalfield, in the real world, had to describe three-quarters of a circle to get to tidewater at Norfolk.  Clinchfield run-throughs over the VGN Kentucky Extension would have only had to describe one-quarter of a circle to get to Norfolk.  This implies that the per-ton-per mile rate charged to the coal owners in question would be able to be cut by two-thirds, and still make both railroads a good profit.

Add in the pig-iron and iron ore traffic, plus the coke and coal products from the Follansbee (WV) integrated coke works, plus the Buckingham County agricultural traffic, and the result is, quite literally, a cast-iron business case backed by two of America's leading industrial trusts.

Think P&LE vs. NYC in West Virginia and Virginia.  I am rather surprised why this project did not go ahead.

As for passenger traffic, very much a side order and serviced by gas-electric cars.