Is it prototypical for a single spur to access more than one business, or is it more likely that a single spur would be built to access a single business?
Yes it is prototypical and adds to operation. Particularly if the car in the way is being loaded or unloaded when the railroad wants to reach the back industy or industries. The key was probably the volume of traffic the industry generated. Occasional users were probably more likely to share tracks or joint tracks were probably dictated by tight locations.
Excellent! Thank you for the info! I have 2 background buildings being serviced by a single spur, and I was contemplating taking one of them out. Now, I won’t have to! [:D]
Well, if I was designing an industrial park with railroad access, I would try to make some businesses share a spur if I knew that they would not both be wanting services at the same time. For instance, a maple syrup factory would only have tanks inbound just after the spring thaw. But a produce stand would ship out during the fall. These two could share a spur. The grocer’s warehouse, on the other hand, will have cars coming and going all year. It should be on a spur alone. A variant would be to put the low-usage guy in the back and the frequent-usage guy in front.
Another way to do it would be to pretend there is a standard contract that says the industry will finish all its loading / unloading during the night shift. So when your local comes along about 8:30 AM, every buisiness along the shared spur HAS to be ready to have their cars taken, replaced, moved, or whatever.
Let me give you an actual prototype example, “Badger Siding” in South Milwaukee WI on the old C&NW line, sometimes called the passenger main, now a lightly used UP line.
Badger Siding curves off the main which is roughly north south and went directly east.
The CNW had left handed running and avoided facing point switches where it could so the train would proceed south on left handed main and back into Badger Siding, which was protected by a derail.
Within the curve was a Deep Rock oil facility that unloaded tank cars. The tanks were on one side of the track while the office and pipes for loading tank trucks was on the other side of the track. That facility ceased rail deliveries in the early 1960s and closed not long after. Right where the track straightened out to go due east a nearby tannery would get raw hides in 40 ft boxcars, unloaded by pitchfork onto flatbeds which were hauled into the plant by small fork lift trucks. These days a local lumber yard gets lumber on center beam flat cars, sometimes the cars are partly on the curve near the old oil facility, sometimes closer to where the tannery got its cars.
Way way back that first tannery had been a tile plant and a soap factory and had rail service for both.
Immediately after where the tannery got box cars, back in the 1960s a local hardware store got lumber, back then in boxcars, which they loaded into a flatbed truck – the store was a couple of blocks away. So in a sense this spur was a dedicaed service spur but also a team track. It paralleled a gravel road, Davis Ave…
Then right next to where the hardware store got its boxcars of lumber, a plastics plant got ACF centerflow covered hoppers of plastic pellets – about the size of aspirin – unloaded by tubes and hoses that went under a road to the plant across the street that made and still makes clear plastic bags. You could model the unloading without modeling the plant itself. Sometimes it got two cars at a time. It still does. I remember seeing Re
You may also want to think about includinag a “team track” which can be used by all sorts of businesses. This gives you an opportunity to have a variety of cars on one or two tracks and street running as well if you are modeling an urban area. Small towns had these sorts of tracks as well. I enjoyed reading Dave’s post about the CNW. Try and find something like that to watch today…I’m glad I didn’t have the job of unloading those hide cars–that’ll loosen up your sinuses.
work safe
Another example (near and dear to my heart).
Hatley, WI used to have, IIRC, the C&NW going through. First my grandfather, then my uncle, owned Hatley Lumber Company, and next-door was the Hatley Veneer Co. (One of those small towns with basically one of everything, except for bars… [:)]). A single siding served both.
Every once in a while, I would be visiting for a week or four during summer, and would get the excitement of a GP (likely… I didn’t know EMD from a donkey back then) delivering a carload of lumber, or picking up the empty, right in grandma’s backyard (adjoining the lumber yard.) THAT would keep a 12-year-old from going to sleep! [:D]
Thanks for bringing back a good memory of grandma, esp. since she passed away a little over a year ago. [:(]
Brian Pickering