I read where Great Northern had a trailer on flat car loading ramp in my city, Sioux Falls, S.D., and 3 other S.D. cities in 1969. What would one of these look like? There is an old, wooden ramp in the local yard that is used primarily to load cardboard bales into boxcars with a forklift. Could this be the same ramp?
Not sure about the GN ramps, but over the years I have personally seen similar wooden ramps used for just such a purpose. These lasted into the later 1970’s when they began being replaced by purpose built intermodal loading facilities in larger markets with specialized cranes, etc.
I will see some of these in small towns still but they don’t seem to be in use any longer, at least not as intermodal loading ramps.
I think I found it. There is ramp at the end of a curved, stubbed siding, that is made out of heavt timbers, and gravel(!) It appears that a driver would have to back the trailer up the gravel ramp, then back it from car to car, going around a curve. It would definately require a trucker who could back up.
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Back in the early '70’s there was a piggyback ramp in Thomson on the Georgia Railroad. It was at the end of a siding which also served the local concrete plant. Simply timbers built up to car deck height with the dirt road leading to the cement plant having a wide spot reaching over to where the piggyback “ramp” was located.
The trailers were unloaded circus style. There was a metal plate which stayed on site that was used to close the gap between the flat car and ramp on one side while the fold-down plate on the car was used to close the gap on the other side.
Thomson’s population was only in the 10,000 range back then. I do not believe the ramp survived into the '80s. All drayage was moved to Augusta which was eventully closed in favor of Atlanta.
Two piggyback flats was the most I ever saw at the Thomson ramp., with the local Southeastern trucking terminal picking up the trailers.
Jay
The smaller ramps were pretty much as described in this threads responses.
The larger facilities were somewhat different. In Memphis, at the old Frisco Yale Yard( North of Frisco Ave; east of Airways Blvd.) There was a large piggyback ramp. There were about 3 or 4 stub end tracks that backed up to a timber and gravel inclined ramp. All cars were loaded/unloaded over the end of the string of about 10 or so cars. They first used older road tractors to move the trailers and hand wrenches to set the fifth wheel locks. As things progressed they used lifting fifth wheel assemblies, and later put in air lines for wrenches, and used Ottaway style yard tractors to unload and load As with any kind of operation the refinements came as the business picked up.
Later the BN put in a major facility over across the river at the site of the Harvard Yard ( by Marion,Ar.). At the same time building up the container ramp at the Tennessee Yard, which originally used the old Passenger By-pass to get around the South side of the Yard. I guess it’s still used as I have not been out there in some years.
Southern (later N.S and CSX built transfer facilities at their Yards ( Forrest and Leewood. UP had a larger container and trailer transfer at Sergent Yard, and about 10 years ago built a very large yard ( a facility about 4-5 miles long with multiple tracks and mobile loaders), South of Hwy 64 close by Ebony,Ark.
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In the days before Global 2, the Proviso Piggyback Plaza was one of the most important intermodal facilities on the C&NW. Much of the facility was located on land once occupied by the largest freight house in the world. Piggyback flat cars were loaded for (and unloaded from) most of the smaller cities and towns on the C&NW. (I suspect that any intermodal interchange was rubber-tired to the other railroads). Since most of the C&NW’s ramps were circus facilities (as was Proviso Piggyback Plaza), the direction that trailers faced was important. Proviso, therefore, had an East Ramp and a West Ramp, each with a list of destinations for which cars could be loaded, and its own list of cutoff times for various points, depending on which manifest train carried the cars. At one time Milwaukee and the Twin Cities were important destinations for piggyback service, which was handled on train 477, the “North Star”, or its early-morning counterpart, train 483.
Eventually, the smaller piggyback facilities were closed, and Proviso was converted to two leads and one Piggy-Packer. The tracks were spotted, unloaded, re-loaded, pulled, and humped. For some reason, the pigs never rolled very well, so humping them was not an enjoyable task. Placarded pigs could not be cut off, and weren’t supposed to come up to the hump, but they occasionally did, and were usually handled properly (one misstep years ago cost several people their jobs, at least for a while–had it not been my day off I probably would have been swept off in the cleanup as well).
Those ramps would have also been useful - and were likely originally constructed - to unload similar loads from flatcars - farm tractors and other agricultural equipment, construction equipment, etc. - as well as things from drop-end gondolas, etc.
Like, with REAL elephants and stuff? [:P]
Can you explain circus facilities and circus loading for me? Thanks
“Circus” was just a descriptive name given to this type of facility, on which trailers were backed onto the cars from the ramp at the stub end of the track. A lot like circus wagons were loaded and unloaded, which was probably the only time pre-piggyback that a lot of folks would see anything like it (except for tractors and such, mentioned above–keep in mind that when these came around, automobiles were usually loaded onto box cars through side doors, not onto auto rack cars).
Murph:
Amazing how much information is in that 1969 Official Guide isnt it?
The evolution of the intermodal industry is interesting. There was a piggyback ramp at Olney (population 9000 at the time) on the Mattoon - Evansville branch of the IC. I doubt if they generated much business at the ramp and if they did, it couldnt have been profitable.
Olney to Chicago? Let see it would have been about 230 miles and would have involved ramping at Olney, a local to Mattoon, switching to a road freight to Chicago and unloading. How long would the transit been for that?
Olney to Memphis? Go north 50 miles, then south to Memphis…the trucker would have had the load delivered by the time it got loaded on a southbound road freight at Mattoon.
It would be interesting to know how many loads actually moved from the ramp…and where the loads were destined.
ed
Most “military” trains are loaded and unloaded “circus style.” And yes, it’s important which direction the flats come in, so the vehicles can be driven off. Many military bases that handle such movements have a wye extant, lessening the need for the railroad to ensure that the cars are properly oriented on loading or enroute.
I grew up near GM’s Milford, MI, Proving Grounds, which also included (and may still) a military and heavy vehicle section. Occasionally a tank would arrive or leave by rail. C&O beefed up the loading dock at their Milford station (long since out of the passenger business) so tanks could be handled. Rather than end loading, the flats were spotted alongside the dock and the tanks were “see sawed” onto the car. The dock (along with the repurposed station) is still there, although the siding is also long gone and I doubt the timbers would hold up a tank any more.
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I remember seeing boxcars being unloaded at our local lumber yard - one board at a time. The unloading crew (possibly all one of him - I really don’t know) would put the board on a set of rollers that carried the board inside the lumber shed, where presumably someone caught it and stored it in the proper bin.
I never watched them do a whole car, but I’d imagine it was pretty much an all day job…
Here is a photo of an old TOFC / circus style ramp. Note the TOFC flats on the adjoining track, just in front of the grounded box car. We have a similar ramp in my town - former CNW ramp.
http://www.gingerb.com/CNJ%20PRR%20Buttonwood%20Piggyback%20Ramp%20JUN%2021,%201966.jpg
When I first went to work for a lumberyard in 1981, they still had a straddle buggy. It had not been used in a looooong time. I remember riding on it, the one time we had to get it going and move it to another part of the yard. I never did figure out why you wanted to pick up a unit of lumber the long way, underneath the machine, and what the realtionship was, between straddlebuggies and railroad shipping of lumber.
I noticed that they loaded the 50 pound bags of carrots into the reefer by hand in the article in the November 2001 issue of Trains about tracking that load across country the then new Express Lane service.
Long time ago, in one of his late 1960s - early 1970s columns for Trains, John Kneiling wrote about a lumber yard operator who was complaining about slow transit times and erratic deliveries of carloads of lumber. In this instance, it was 3 cars from Oregon to somewhere in the MidWest, as I recall, and one of the railroads involved - somehow I think it was SP - told him the cars should be there in something like 21 to 45 days.
The lumber guy went on to complain that it took something like 7 men plus equipment (not specified) all day to unload a car when it did show up, and that it was tough to get that organized and accomplished within the 2 days’ free demurrage time when the cars showed up without any advance notice. John also commented on that - if it tppk 7 men plus the equipment, the lumber guy had another problem, too.
Insert here my by-now standard line: ‘If I get a chance, I’ll look it up and retrieve it sometime.’ Might actually happen - I saw that article within the last 3 months or so.
For those not familiar with a straddle carrier, here’s a link to a webpage with a couple of (poor quality) photos of them - 1 under load apparently inside at the 2nd photo down, and 1 empty outside at the 4th photo down:
http://www.osha.gov/SLTC/etools/sawmills/lumber_handling.html