A very lucky find on eBay is this issue of Model Rails Magazine. A small publication that I had never previously heard of, this premiere issue features a thorough article on the Georgetown Branch operations on the waterfront. Not only is it full of details, but it is focused on building a model of the terminal. I’ve scanned it and hope you enjoy this as much as I did!
If anyone knows more about this publication, I’d love to hear about it. I found it fascinating that a publication from the 1950s was so prototype-focused. There were at least two volumes, but I have found no more beyond that run.
“A concrete and steel freeway; easily disregarded by model builders, praise be; runs over most of its length.” – such prose is never to be found these days.
These diagrams are always great, the vast amounts of tracks and industries in them show how busy and diverse Georgetown once was before development, too bad there’s so little pics of anything past the new yard.
Here, here!
Thank for sharing this.
What caught my attention was the power house siding from the new yard, described as climbing upgrade to serve Maloney Concrete (presumably to drop loads under the tracks?)
I get the sense there might be minor inaccuracies of detail. Smoot Sand & Gravel was described simply as Super Concrete. There was a “bulk oil dealer” between Lone Star Cement and the new yard, but I believe that was a paving contractor. Perhaps that had changed to a bulk oil dealer by then (this does ring a bell in my memory). Not sure the track layout in the old yard is 100%spot on. The GSA West Heating plant not mentioned, just described as a coal unloading depot with coal trucked elsewhere in the city (probably not).