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March 1940. "Operating switch at railroad station. Carson City, Nevada." Photo by Arthur Rothstein for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
Actually it is no more complicated to layout a three-way stub than it is to lay out a single switch--just twice as much work. You basically work off of a set of tables in a a book.
Stub switches are no longer legal on interchange railroads in the USA. They are not as safe as a 'knife' switch because a train going through a switch set incorrectly will derail and drop the lead cars onto the ties. (an experience I do not want to repeat!)
Here is an example of a modern 3-way stub located at the Railroad Museum at Ardenwood, in Fremont, CA on a 3 ft gauge railroad. The switch stand is a harp stand located just out of the picture on the left (you can see the target),
Looks like the day marker was used as a target on one or more occasions.
This car probably goes into Mexico and back, so liters=litros
that oil tank car is measured in both litres and gallons??
[Capacidad 40436 litros (liters) does indeed = 10862 gallons. -tterrace]
Never seen a three-way track switch before. That's some clever engineering.
Nice view of a stub switch, not uncommon on narrow gauge railroads, but V&T was standard gauge. That's V&T locomotive #26, a 1907 Baldwin 4-6-0. She was destroyed in an engine house fire in 1950.
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