Track Alignment and Right of Way

[peter.lieber]

I am in the planning stages of a layout in Salt Lake City, UT. I have been looking at google maps and maps of stations on UTA's website to get track alignment and right of way information. Googles maps and a couple years old, so they are missing some newly added structures and things. What is a good resource to find maps of current track alignments and who has right of way on what tracks?

 

[UP2CSX]

Google Earth has about the most up to date aerial and hybrid maps, especially for large cities like Salt Lake. Your city planning or engineering department also maintains very up to date maps for things like utilites and zoning and they often have them available in PDF format.

I'm not sure what you mean by right of way on tracks. Are you asking what railroads have trackage rights other than the railroad that owns the tracks?

 

[peter.lieber]

Yes. For example, UP owns some of the track that the UTA frontrunner communter train runs on. I want to find out what track the train runs on so I can run my model on the same track (is that getting too picky for a model railroad?). So, who owns the track and who has right of way are both good information.

 

[UP2CSX]

I'd contact the UTA public relations office. They probably have this kind of information readily available.

 

[MrTrain]

is that the same as Google Maps?

 

[UP2CSX]

No, Google Earth is completely different. You can get it at http://earth.google.com/. It's a pretty big and RAM intensive program but it can do some amazing stuff.

 

[AL1]

If you are looking for more detail that what Google Earth provides, you can try the Microsoft version.. The satellite photos are usually outdated, but you can use the "Birds Eye View" feature for most major cities. Provides so much more detail than static Google images..

Here is the site;
www.windowslivelocal.com

 

[D&J RailRoad]

Google Earth has a lot of features that Google map doesn't, I.E. aircraft flight mode. I use that to follow along rail routes and to get ground perspective in mountainous regions. It gets interesting when ya turn off the street names feature then try to find your way home.

 

[68 Camaro]

I was using Google Earth until I was told about MSN Live Search Maps. Us the "Birds Eye" adjustment to get even closer than Google. It seems to be a clearer picture. I use Google for street views.

http://maps.live.com/