Freelance 2015-2

[faraway]

I agree with Mike,but you need more greenery.Weeds in the US are a stubborn lot.They will grow anywhere including some places you would never suspect.

That is a complicated matter. I studied a lot of photos of that area and found an interesting comment in a Yahoo news group. It looks like in the beginning (prior to 1900) did they really eliminate all kind of vegetation and kept the area virtually free of any green. As time goes by and the transfer railroads became less important started the weed to grow. Photos taken past 1950 show more and more weed. My layout is at about 1930. There was only very few weed visible at that time. I will add some but it will be much less than in industrial areas usually modeled.

ps. I have no idea how they kept it free of weed for some decades. I have doubt if they removed weed manually. At the same time do you see a lot of litter and garbage on the ground. Did they have powerful chemical weed killers at that time? I don't know. An other idea is the kind of ground cover. It looks not like anything like sand etc. It is dark and muddy. May be it is some kind of cinder full of toxic parts preventing weed from growing?
In the Yahoo group is a speculation that the enormous number of labor works simply walked steady over the weed and destroyed it. But tat would permit weed to grow in corners and niches etc.

Refer to : http://www.bioone.org/doi/abs/10.1614/00...lCode=wees Not a good explanation how it was done in 1890 cleaning a terminal railroad property.