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 Return to Bridge Blvd. and turn right.Detour: If you haven’t had enough to eat by now, take a short stroll to El Modelo. The take-out eatery with limited outdoor seating offers comfort food. Hot, heavy, messy, and delicious, it’s indisputably the city’s best Mexican dive. The red-chile spare ribs are perfectly spicy and savory. Gorge yourself, and then go north on 2nd St. to walk it off.

 If skipping the detour, turn left on 3rd and cross the dirt lot on the north side of the overpass (Guadalupe Bridge).

 Turn left on 2nd St. The neighborhood ahead fronts the rail yards, built between 1914 and 1924 and operated first by the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and later by Burlington Northern. (Since the merger in 1996, the rails have operated under the dominion of BNSF.) At their height in the early 20th century, the rail yards employed nearly a quarter of the city’s workforce. Since their closure in the 1970s, the shops have been steadily falling into ruin. Recent drives to renovate the site into a commercial district have been enthusiastic, yet painfully slow. One theory on the delay involves the site’s value in its current state of derelict. The massive industrial landscape is invaluable as a filming location. The Avengers, Terminator Salvation, and Breaking Bad are among the big-budget productions partially filmed here. In 2014, the blacksmith shop became the site for the Rail Yards Market, a highly popular Sunday event with local farmers, food trucks, healers, herbalists, artists, and entertainers.The first structure you’ll see behind the chain-link and barbed-wire fence is a narrow, single-story storehouse that covers nearly 19,000 square feet. Built in 1915, it’s the oldest building still standing on the site. It currently houses the Wheels Museum, dedicated to preserving the history of transportation in the American West. To the immediate north, the machine shop, built in 1921, is the largest building, covering 165,000 square feet, or 3.8 acres. Its multicolored windows rival the stained glass on the Fellowship Hall.On your left, the Railroad Superintendent’s House at the corner of Pacific Ave. is one of the first and finest railroad buildings. Built in 1881 for Frank W. Smith, this Victorian Romantic cottage features three corbeled brick chimneys, a cross-gabled roof, finely carved sandstone lintels, carpenter Gothic pillars capped with arabesque corbels, and an open porch that wraps around the north and east sides of the house. The walls are red sandstone from a quarry near Laguna Pueblo.A two-story firehouse built in 1920 stands near the Y where 1st St. begins. Entry to the Rail Yards Market is just ahead on the right. This route continues straight on 2nd St. The blocks ahead, particularly the one between Stover and Iron, showcase some fascinating architectural designs from the railroad era. The three-story Queen Anne–style house on the southwest corner of 2nd St. and Iron Ave., built in 1899, functioned as the American Hotel from 1910 to 1929 and later as rented apartments. In 1952 it became the founding site of the Brothers of the Good Shepherd and the first homeless refuge in Albuquerque. (See ssss1 for more details.) The Albuquerque Rescue Mission is across the street on the northwest corner. As expected, this area draws transient crowds and tends to get a bit sketchy at times.

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