Houston, TX: Union Station and Houston Astros Daikin/Minute Maid Stadium

(Satellite)

Street View, May 2022

Threshold 360

Russell Kaye, Dec 2016

Ross Williams, Nov 2018

While researching the BNSF Milby Railyard, I discovered that the 1956 courthouse is gone, but the headhouse of the Union Station is extant. Any depot headhouse that has survived in a big city is worth noting. The Houston Astros retained the headhouse when they turned the train shed and passenger train tracks into their ballpark.

1955/57 Settegast Quad @ 24,000

The roof of the stadium is retractable. This view shows the roof rolled to the side on elevated rails.

Street View, Mar 2026

And this view shows the roof in the closed position. Most of the views with a closed roof have a cloudy sky and probably threaten rain. I wonder why it is closed in this view because there is not a cloud in the sky and they should not have to run the air conditioning in October considering how many views had the roof open. It looks like Minute Maid did not renew the naming rights. Daikin is "a leading air conditioning and refrigeration" company. (The quote comes from a Google Search results. I could not find where Google found that claim.)

Street View, Oct 2019

Another view of the roof in the open position. We can see the upper and lower parts of the roof have their own rails.

Street View, Mar 2026

And this view caught it in the closed position with the empty elevated rails.

Street View, Sep 2022

I knew that the Houston Astros moved out of the Astrodome, but I didn't know to where they moved until now.

Houston, TX: BNSF/Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe Milby Yard

Turntable: (Satellite, saving the location of another turntable because the yard is now abandoned.)

Street View, Nov 2022

Erin Bristow posted 11 images with the comment: "BNSF has abandoned their yard/shop on Milby street in downtown Houston. Stopped by today, turntable is flooded and sadly the homeless have already moved in.  Construction crews are prepping for demolition soon.  Its the only turntable in the Houston area.  Wish it could be saved by the future developer and kept as an historical landmark.  🫤"

Roger Eyrich shared

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This yard probably initially serviced locomotives for passenger trains to Union Station and then locomotives for freight trains that were handed off to the Houston Belt & Terminal Railroad.

1955/57 Settegast and Park Place Quads @ 24,000

In case a developer wipes this yard clean, this is what it looked like.

Satellite

I knew that CB&Q had a route from Colorado to Texas, but I thought that route terminated in Fort Worth, TX. So how did BNSF get to Houston? The answer appears to be the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, which went from Fort Worth to Galveston. That railroad was serious about the "Gulf" part of their name, the railroad went west and south of Houston to get to Galveston. It did have a branch going North from Alvin to access Houston.

1956/63 Houston Quad @ 250,000

1974-2019 2.25gw Navajo Generating Station at Four Corners near Page, AZ

(Satellite, 230 photos)

"Units and In-Service Dates: Unit 1: 803.1 MW (1974), Unit 2: 803.1 MW (1975), Unit 3: 803.1 MW (1976)" [gem]

Page, AZ, was built for the workers that constructed the Glen Canyon Dam.

srpnet
The plant went permanently offline on Nov 18, 2019.

George Clayton McMillan posted, cropped
Navajo Generating Station in Page, AZ. 
2250MW coal fired facility. Worked here for a year during the Decommissioning of the unit.
Andrew Shafer: Pretty sad it’s wiped off the face of the earth now.
Dan McKenna: Any idea who manufactured the boilers? I thought they were either Babcock&Wilcox or Combustion units. Any idea?
David Matesky: They are CE Supercritical boilers.
Scott Patulski: David Matesky you are correct sir. Seltzer design to be specific with split furnaces firing tangentially from 8 corners.
Charles Friedman: When I began working at Combustion Engineering almost 50 years ago, I worked in Field Testing, and Performance Results. I never got to the Four Corners power plant, but others in my department were there, in order to conduct boiler performance and emissions tests on the Unit 1 boiler. In later years, the company, and the successive companies, built even larger steam generators, up to 660,000 Lb/hr SH steam flow, supercritical, lignite fired, with 990 MW generator net output.
Joseph Hallstrom: Charles Friedman, not trying to be picky but 990MW from 660,000 lb/hr of SSH steam? Maybe you missed a zero.
Allen England: Didn't they replace the plant with 250 mw of solar panels?

 

Mining #Shorts posted

The Navajo Generating Station was one of the most recognizable coal plants ever built in the American West. Located near Page, Arizona, the facility operated for more than four decades and became deeply tied to the economy of the Navajo Nation and the wider Southwest power grid.

Construction started in the early 1970s and the plant eventually reached 2,250 megawatts across three generating units. At full operation, it supplied electricity to Arizona, Nevada and California while also powering the pumps of the Central Arizona Project, the massive water system carrying Colorado River water across the Arizona desert.

The station burned coal from the nearby Kayenta Mine, with trains delivering fuel continuously across northern Arizona. For many Navajo and Hopi families, the mine and plant created some of the region’s highest-paying industrial jobs. Tax revenue and lease payments became critical sources of income for local communities.

But the plant also carried enormous controversy. Environmental groups targeted it for decades because of emissions affecting air quality around the Grand Canyon and the broader Southwest. By the 2010s, cheap natural gas and rapidly expanding solar generation made coal power increasingly difficult to justify economically.

In 2017, utility owners voted to shut the station down years earlier than originally expected. The final coal was burned on November 18, 2019, ending operations after roughly 45 years. One year later, the plant’s famous smokestacks were demolished, marking the end of one of America’s most important coal-fired power stations.

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Photo: Myrabella / WikiCommons

Richard Travis: That plant had good sulfur dioxide scrubbers later on in its life. Photo could be early or a time with a low dew point.

Troy Mitchell: They have to wait for the coldest day of the year to take the photos.

Troy Mitchell commented on the above post

I Took this photo myself in Utah on a 96° day when everybody in Utah’s air conditioning was running full blast.

To me It looks like the picture above is Both AI and or taken on a cold day when the warm air turns into steam. Isn’t it funny how we let people that don’t know their head from a hole in the ground run this country.

Mike Painter posted, cropped
Navajo Generation Station in the good ole days.

vox, Adrian Herder/Tó Nizhóní Ání, courtesy of Wahleah Johns/National Renewables
"The three 775-foot smokestacks of the 2,250-megawatt Navajo Generating Station (NGS) — the West’s largest coal plant — were demolished December 18, [2020]."

Even more jobs were lost at the nearby mine that supplies the lignite coal.

coconino
"The mine to mouth’s backbone is the 80 mile long electric railroad supplying Kayenta’s only customer – the Navajo Generating Station (NGS). NGS consumes 240 rail cars of the Kayenta Mine’s coal every day."

This satellite image is old enough that the buildings are still standing and the coal pile is rather full.

Satellite

Baltimore, MD: CSX/B&O Curtis Bay Piers Railyard and Coal Terminal

(Satellite)

The northern pier is loading articulated barges while the southern pier is loading a ship. The ships go to foreign countries. ("China received 25% of the coal, while the rest went to South Korea and the Netherlands." [gem]) I wonder to where the barges deliver the coal.

Satellite

In the right background is the structure on the pier that loads the ships. We can barely see the yellow conveyor that raises the coal above the ship. Railroads used to store coal in many hoppers, now they store it in piles such as the one on the left.

Street View, Jul 2019

This appears to be a photo of the pier that loads barges taken from the one that loads ships. (Actually, it is the little structure on the left that loads barges. The big structure in the middle can load ships.)

Andrew Lucchese, Mar 2022

Conveyor belts are one of the technologies that allows coal to be stored in piles instead of hoppers. It looks like the far hatch is being loaded on this ship and nothing is being loaded at the barge pier.

Justine jan Pesaro, Oct 2023

The coal loading facilities are in the background of this view. This is where I found the name "Curtis Bay Piers" for this railyard.

csxcurtisbayfacts

I wondered why this railyard had its own domain name. Then I realized it was to deal with the public relations issue of polluting Curtis Bay with dust from its coal handling operation. [e.g. csxcurtisbayfacts_monitoring]

This confirms that a ship can also be loaded from what I called the "barge pier."

Joel Amenamen, Apr 2025

A closer view of the conveyor belts.

Kevin Lowe, Oct 2019

I think these three sheds house the rotary dumpers. The locomotive on the left is the mother of two slugs and the one on the right has one slug. Since the coal trains are unloaded slowly, the horsepower of a locomotive is not needed for speed so the slugs help use the horsepower for tractive effort. No train is being unloaded in this scene.

Kevin Lowe, Oct 2019

The conveyor emerging from under the ground to the left of the sheds reinforces my opinion that the sheds house the unloaders.

Satellite

This video is about the Cumberland Yard. However, while they talk about the Cumberland Yard supporting coal traffic to the coal terminal, they have some scenes of this coal terminal.

Facebook Reel

One of the scenes is coal being dumped from a hopper.

Same Reel @ 0:18

1957/60 Curtis Bay Quad @ 24,000

This view no longer exists because the Francis Scott Key Bridge no longer exists since a ship allided with it. This terminal would be one of the several terminals in the Port of Baltimore that could not receive or send ships while they were removing the bridge remnants from the shipping channel.

Mielsine Infante, May 2023

Kansas City, KS: UP/MoPac Armstrong, UP Matoon Creek and UP/RI Armourdale Yards

UP Armstrong: (Satellite)

UP Matoon Creek: (Satellite)

RI Armourdale: (Satellite, the southern part of this yard was the Rock Island.)

Caoimhín Kevin Bunker posted three images with the comment: "Here's just one of those perfectly posed roundhouse photographs:  Union Pacific's Kansas Division at Armstrong, KS., c.1870s.  We see four beautiful Baldwin 4-4-0s and four handsome Rogers 4-4-0s, the eldest and smallest of which (making the most stack exhaust) had been downgraded to a switch engine and fitted with pilot footboards.  The engine crews also posing were justifiably proud.  Southern Methodist University Libraries - digital collections (online)"

Guillermo Bas: Not all the engines shown were 4-4-0s, KP 80 (third from the left) was an 0-6-0 switcher, Baldwin 2326 of 1870. She survived until 1916 as Shop Goat Cheyenne.

Rolando Maggi shared

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Dana T. Parker posted
The Union Pacific roundhouse at Armstrong, Kansas (ca 1870s), showing off its handsome engines...
Tom Hamilton: I assume that this is Armstrong yard in Kansas City, KS.
Dana T. Parker: Yes. Armstrong used to be a separate community, but was absorbed by Kansas City.
Rolando Maggi shared

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John Ott commented on Caoimhín's post
The Kansas Pacific started life as the "Union Pacific Railway Eastern Division" in hopes of siphoning off some of the congressional grant money and land offered to builders of a transcontinental RR. Here's one of the Rogers locomotives fresh from the factory, according to the Rogers order specs.
And he commented on Dana's post
Wrong "Union Pacific." Kansas Pacific Rwy started out corporate life as the Union Pacific Rwy. Eastern Division in 1863, but had no relation to the Union Pacific RR starting in Omaha. Started laying track in Kansas City that same year, changed name to Kansas Pacific in 1869, and reached Denver in 1870. The photo of the roundhouse in Armstrong, KS, was taken in 1873. Here's one of their early engines.

Andre Ming commented on Dana's post
I've always really liked this picture. I have this smaller non-cropped version that shows the original photograph I.D. plate.

1957 Shawnee and Kansas City Quads @ 24,000

This is how I learned about the Armourdale Yard.

Fans of Rock Island Lines posted

Terry Hinds: Flood of 1951. The Missouri River caused the Kaw river to back up. Heavy rains in the region caused bad flooding.