One great site for researching a prototype is Terraserver. You can put in a place name and get interactive photos and maps of the place. The photo below is of the Frost Flyover from a 1995 USGS "flyover". I rotated it to fit on this page, so North is actually on the left. On the right is "Gray's Hill" and the top left is Horseshoe Lake at the Mojave Narrows Regional Park. I'm not sure how much longer these hills will be stucco-free, which is one of the reasons I'm fixing the time period of the new layout at the turn of the millenia. The other reason is that BNSF was still running war bonnets, patch jobs and LMX power; UPRR was running SP, CNW and Rio Grande power; and to top it off, Congress hadn't yet thought about disolving Amtrak!