The building with the tall metal silo and ducting resembles a cement plant. That would be a decent UB for America. I'm still working on the other one. Steel mills tend to be laid out in long buildings, but I think it's still something along those lines. A mill of some kind.
Modern cement and reinforced concrete were developed in England and France, but it was an American, Thaddeus Hyatt, whose scientific study of reinforced concrete in 1877 established it as a suitable material for all kinds of construction.
Ironically, the '3-bay' roundhouse was marketed to model railroaders by several companies as a kit back in the 1950s and 60s, and became a sort of default version of the structure. Makes me wonder if one of the designers didn't dabble in model railroading back in the day. Actual roundhouses were usually far larger, and some were completely round with the housing covering not only the 'stalls' for the locomotives but the turntable in the middle: enormous structures. The roundhouse was popular for steam locomotives because the structure provided the most space at the outer end of the track, and locomotives were driven in head-first. Since most of the parts needing continuous maintenance were at the front of the locomotive - the pistons, drive gear, etc, it was the perfect set-up for working on the engines. Since the roundhouse became obsolete when diesel engines took over after WWII, it is the perfect iconic structure for the period up until about 1945 - the apex of American Industrial dominance.
Either way this makes a lot of sense to use model railroad objects as inspiration since they're explicitly going for a "diorama art style" after all.
Is there any Exploration civ with a Unique Great person? Other than Abbasids, I mean.
Like so?
aahhhhh, nice. I looked at that building for a long time and came up with nothing.
Portland Cement was the idea I rolled with to find it. It's super important, we wouldn't have infrastructure without that stuff.
As posted, 'Portland cement' was originally developed in England from the mid-18th century, called that because it was said to resemble Portland stone from a quarry in England. It didn't reach the US until the 1870s, but (also as posted) the US ran with it, and by the early 20th century was producing more than anybody else in the world.
From the photographs I've seen of old railroads (1880s to 1940s) the only time locomotives would be posed with the front showing out of the roundhouse would be for a photoshoot to show off the locomotive roster: the front end of a steam locomotive looks so much more distinctive than the back end of the coal and water tender!
