RAILFAN GUIDES of the U.S.
Todd's
Railfan Guide to
HOUSTON TX
The Downtown Area
In General
Map
Sights
Bridges
Light Rail
Floobydust
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The downtown area of Houston offers the railfan quite a few items of note......
The Amtrak Station, Union Station, Tower 26, the Light Rail system, and a number of bridges offering interesting photo ops.
Map 1 -
Englewood Yard
Map 2 - Tower
85
Map 3 - Tower
87
Map 4 - Pierce
Junction/Diamond
Map 5 - Downtown
Wooden Trestle
One of the few surviving pieces of the MKT's route into downtown from the west side and Eureka Yard. The bridge has been given a new life as part of the hiking trail that winds it's way through the downtown area. The bridge is not completely wood, as the main span is a girder bridge, but the approaches still use the old timbers. The bridge is under the Crockett Street bridge (I know, gotta redo the map).
UP Girder Bridge Ex MKT
Girder Bridge A good spot for pictures, of both trains and the light rail system. If you walk down to the bottom of the overpass at Main and Commerce, it's a good spot to catch pix of the light rail with the well
done median strip the city has put in. WB trains are the easiest to shoot from the Main Street overpass, as EB's run underneath the parking garage for the university, although it does provide for an interesting shot. For pictures
taken at this station, check out my
Metro Light
Rail page up at the top of the page - altho the whole page needs to be
updated.
If I can't quite tell from the views on Google Maps, but it looks as if this bridge may have been replaced to complete the hikey-bikey trail.
UP
Girder Bridge
If you ride the light rail all the way to the UH/Downtown station, at the
University of Houston, you can get pretty good shots of traffic coming through here from the Main Street overpass.
UP
Concrete Girder Bridge
UP
Concrete Girder Bridge
UP
Concrete Girder Bridge
UH/Downtown Station
UH Police Car
Found via Google's Streetview along the hikey-bikey train under Main St.
New:
1MAR2012
Mod: 25-Aug-2016