Modeler's Moment - Former grade crossings create instant history

It's said that "the only constant is change," and this tenet is evident in a myriad of ways in the rail transport industry. As model railroaders, we have an equally large number of ways that we can show evidence of changes on our layouts. Here's an example that I saw on the prototype over the weekend. The location in this image is Black Earth, Wisconsin, a town on the former Milwaukee Road line between Madison and Prairie du Chien. The mainline is still in use through this town by Wisconsin & Southern, but as we can see in this photo, the facility across the street used to have an industrial spur leading to it. The narrow strip of asphalt in line with the building covers the former grade crossing. Notice that the patch over the track location is slightly darker than the surrounding pavement? On a model layout, such a detail can be added to almost any street, even at a sharp angle to the layout edge, and as we see here, we can add this detail not only in the large cities, but in the small towns too.