What does your railroad’s headquarters look like?
E
very railroad, large or small, has a headquarters. Class 1’s usually have a series of giant monolithic structures, regionals tend to have buildings with a smaller footprint, and short- lines, well, shortlines have whatever they can come up with. Sometimes that home office is a small corrugated shack; other times it is a basic one-story building. Shortlines, however, can on occasion surprise us and have their main offices in something that actually looks like it belongs trackside. Exhibit A: the combination headquarters and crew quarters of the Los Angeles Junction Railway in Vernon, California, a small unincorporated city just south of downtown Los Angeles. A wholly-owned subsidiary of BNSF, LAJ is, and has been since its incep- tion in the 1920’s, a switching railroad for the Southern California cities of Vernon, Maywood, Bell, and Commerce. Completing the scene are the locomotive servicing tracks just a short walk away. Throughout the years it has seen 0-6-0’s, Alco S-2 and S-4 diesels, a quartet of Liquid Natural Gas units, and CF7’s. Even a RailPower Green Goat demonstrator stayed on the LAJ for a while. Today it is inhabited by BNSF GP60M’s, some still in their former Santa Fe colors, and new three-engine National Railway Equipment gensets.
As far as small headquarters buildings go, the Los Angeles Junction’s is rather homely, just a two-story stucco (the official building material for much of California) edifice. But wait. Look again. There are many homey touches to this nicely maintained piece of railroad Americana sitting in a sea of Southern California concrete. There is pride here. Look at the nice awnings keeping the harsh glare of the summer sun at a distance, the red “no parking” curb that nudges against a series of well-tended, and watered, shrubs. There is a cover over the doorway, good-sized trash cans to re- mind people not to litter, signs making sure that everyone who approaches knows who this belongs to, a white fence protecting people who might bound out of one of the doors too quickly from the nearby tracks, and, something the nearby Los Angeles skyscrapers don’t have, more bushes track- side. Even the radio tower and its guide wires on the roof look the right size. And Old Glory seems to be on a flagpole that looks ideal, too. To help ensure employee safety–this is Los Angeles, you know–there are numerous night lights and a number of well-placed video cameras. So how does this translate to your efforts at creating a headquarters building? Look at this
scene, or any others you might come across during your travels, and see what works for you. You might like the low bushes and U.S. flag, but the banner doesn’t float your boat. Fine. Remember to install bushes and a flag on your railroad and forget the banner. The same thing goes for the sur- veillance camera and trash cans. Use them, or don’t. It’s totally up to you. Maybe you want to duplicate the overhead power lines into the building. Or just maybe you had
the forethought to install underground power lines. Perhaps you don’t think much of the locomo- tive pad being so close. Or maybe it’s not close enough. And if it is, you might not have the same space, forcing the motive power to be parked elsewhere and brought in only when being used. You’re not stuck with stucco, either. I can just see a traditional two-story wood station painted yellow with brown trim. Maybe a green peaked roof. Whatever it turns out to be, let your imagina- tion run wild. That’s the trick. It’s easy to suggest a building that would look good on your railroad, but it also has to fit in your railroad’s spirit of things. Change the building materials; make it longer, taller, shorter. Add storm doors, change the parking lot. You don’t model California but still want to have a big-city industrial short line? Make it New
Jersey and substitute camelbacks, Baldwin road switchers and FM switchers. Borrow from the pro- totype and make it work for you. After all, it is your railroad, isn’t it?
DAVID LUSTIG photography/DAVID LUSTIG 38 JUNE 2013
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