Re: 20-36 dual gauge?

Good eyes gentlemen. I agree that the common rail approaching from the right appears to be closest to you, but ends up being on the inside adjacent to each other between the "main" and "siding". Switching the 36" gauge is easy, but transitioning and switching the 20" within the same switch is unbelievable. Makes you wonder why they just didn't use a "swoosh" after leaving the switch.

Any modeler that likes hand laying track - here is your challenge! Extra points the smaller the scale.

The wildest track arrangement I had to deal with was at Soo Line's Shoreham yard in the Twin Cities. The old yard was very compact with the ladder tracks curving quite a bit into he yard tracks. The switches overlapped - before you reached the frog of the one switch you already had the points for the next. I was advised not even to look at the points but to rely on the targets as to what track I was going to end up on.

Bad caption? Wasn't the Morenci Southern the 36" gauge (later standard gauged), and the 20" the Phelps-Dodge mine track?

Trivia: The New Mexico and Arizona Railroad is not to be confused with the Arizona and New Mexico Railroad which was built by Santa Fe between Nogales and Benson originally intended to be part of their transcontinental line. When Santa Fe bought the A&P and made that their access to the Pacific they sold the A&NM (as well as the line south into Mexico) to the SP as part of the whole Needles to Mojave settlement. SP continued to run a mixed train on part of the line until 1961 before abandonment, a short stretch from Nogales north is all that remains of the original line. The SP branch to Clifton was apparently the last mixed train on the SP (at least the Pacific lines) lasting until a few years before Amtrak.