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Union Tank Car Geodesic Dome

In the late 50s, the Union Tank Car Company commissioned Buckminster Fuller to design a radical new kind of tank car maintenance facility in Baton Rouge, LA. Centered on a radial transfer table, this new facility allowed tank cars to be spotted at any track within the facility to allow maintenance to be conducted on an as needed basis, as opposed to traditional linear facilities where cars had to wait for other cars' maintenance to be complete before proceeding to another part of the facility.

When it was completed in 1958, the Union Tank Car Dome was the largest uninterrupted span in the world. Its design proved to be a radical success, leading to a nearly identical facility being constructed in Wood River, IL.

Sadly, tank cars became longer, and the original dome was unable to handle the added length. The Baton Rouge facility was sold to the Kansas City Southern Railroad in 1990, and allowed to decay. It was demolished in 2007, one year before it was eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places.

Happily, its brother in Wood River, IL proved more adaptable to lengthier cars, and still survives as a railcar maintenance facility to this day. More information about the facility can be gleaned from the free documentary, A Necessary Ruin


This is a 1:1 scale recreation of the original Baton Rouge facility, though the truss system is more similar to the Wood River facility. It is flexible enough to be used for any kind of rail car maintenance facility, from 1958 to the near future. It is colorable using the Painter mod, and by default shows up in either yellow, white, blue, or pink.

Stats for nerds:

16.3k triangles
Custom LOD
300 industrial jobs
1024 x 1024 _d_s_i_c textures

[t.co]


PS: the thing that looks like a wiener is the paint shop. it has clamshell doors at the end. don't blame me for phallic imagery, i'm just copying what was there