These Patterns On a Fence in Portland Look Random Until You Know The Meaning Behind Them

If you happen to be driving along the waterfront on Commercial Street in Portland and notice this fence, you might think that this is just a random pattern. You might be surprised to learn that it has much more meaning than it appears. 

When the State of Maine built a new rail trans-loading facility to ship containers of Poland Spring water by rail, West Commercial Street underwent a major change. It was built on a rail yard that had been, for the most part, inactive for nearly 50 years as more and more items were shipped by truck rather than rail.

The facility was upgraded which included landscaping and a fence to surround the trans-loading area. At the base of the fence are five repeating patterns in the concrete. They look random but are actually a map.

The maps show what the rail yard looked like over 50 years ago when it was a major rail facility in its heyday. The thin lines are rails and the thicker lines are West Commercial Street with other shapes depicting buildings that used to stand here.

With the creation of the new trans-load facility, the state hopes to attract more businesses to offload cargo from ships along the waterfront and ship by rail. Eimskip is currently shipping Poland Spring water three days a week.

Here's what the rail yard looked like from Google Satellite before the reconstruction.

What I wish I could find though is the map that they based this mural on. I spent a good day searching on the web with no luck. If you happen to have find a map of yard 8 along the Portland Waterfront from when this maps was based on, share it with us on Facebook or Twitter.