# Playing with google earth



## Davidfd85 (Jul 4, 2011)

I was playing around with google earth today looking at yards in different cities. I ended up looking at Ft. Woth, TX and found a couple of nteresting things.

I'm pretty sure that is an empty schnabel car parked in the yard. Bottom row, Blue one.



Then I found these partly assembled switches sitting on the ground in another part of the yard



Interesting what you can see just playing around


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## DonR (Oct 18, 2012)

Are they Peco or Atlas? 

Don


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## Davidfd85 (Jul 4, 2011)

With the brownish color of the ties I'm leaning towards Pecos 

Really thinking about how the heck are they going to lift them and put them in place. That would be really nice to watch.


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## FRED On Board (Jan 2, 2014)

Davidfd85, et al...

Not long ago I saw a YouTube video of the Schnabel railcar carrying a reactor of some kind from its manufacturer in Canada to a destination in the U.S by BNSF...A slow moving but impressive transport it was (!) and I support your contention that the railcar seen in your aerial view is an empty Schnabel.

As for the turnouts in your aerial view, a brief personal history...For a decade, I had a workshop about 100 yards from the UP mainline of two tracks north out of Houston and two miles south of the UP Lloyd yard in Spring...Until about 5 or 6 years ago, if you looked eastward, directly toward the tracks from a roadside position in the front of my workshop, you would see a manually operated turnout to the right, about 40 or 50 yards down the nearest of the two mainline tracks...That turnout was to access a stub that fed the UP automobile yard where cars and light trucks were off-loaded, parked and then put onto auto-carriers for delivery to local Houston area auto dealers.

Then, work was begun on lengthening that stub north, with a new turnout to be positioned some 50 or so yards to the left of my workshop...And as the track work was being completed over a number of days, an already assembled manually operated turnout was sitting trackside in a field very close to the tracks awaiting installation to the mainline at the proper time...From a distance it looked much like we, as model railroad builders, buy and install to our layouts...I was absent to see how the turnout got positioned in the field and again how it got moved to the site of its installation, but my point is that it was delivered looking pretty much like what many of us buy in a blister pack, etc.

Thanks (again), for the interesting aerial views!

Bruce /FRED On Board
ATSF, BN, SP, UP


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## Davidfd85 (Jul 4, 2011)

The thing about the schanbel car that caught my eye was the shadow, then I started looking more closely at it looking at the shadows of the ends and then the couplers. Thats how I figured what it was.
The switches are what you said they look like they were just dropped out of a package. I wonder if they build them on site or transport them in.


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