Now that I have paid some attention to the car maintenance works near where I live I have realised the potential of such a facility for interesting car movements. I’m not planning to model an entire works… this ‘small’ one fans out to about 15 tracks in two groups. I’ve been seeing a much more modest facility that is little more than two track tin sheds about two cars long either side of a feed track. Just one track has a heavy crane/hoist straddling it outside one of the sheds.
From the few pics I’ve seen of independent car maintainers in the USA the second seems to be something that occurs around the USA.
So I’m wondering whether this sort of thing occurred in the 1980s and,if so, where I might search for pics… or if anyone has any pics?
Current practice is, if a rail car needs repair then the railroad that has it in its possession performs the repair and bills the owning road; at least among the major roads that interchange rolling stock.
Most such repairs are minor and are performed outdoors on a RIP (Repair In Place) track.
If a rail car needs extensive repair, the owning railroad will have a “car shop” for that purpose. For example, the Illinois Central car shops were in Centralia, Illinois, where they could totally rebuild a car.
It does contract work on private cars and has done some work on ARMN reefers. It also repaired one of NMRA anniversary boxcars. The industrial lead was recently shortened to this point. It used to be call the “Old Main Line” because the track with the hoppers on it was originally the transcontinental main line of the UP. When they built the Lane Cutoff, it was downgraded to a branch. Ironically the local NMRA division meets in a Library that was built on the site of the Papillion depot and former UP main line.
You can post smaller links by highlighting some words, clicking on the link button, and making those words (or that word the link). That way, you do not have to scroll side to side to read the posts. I did that with your post.
Norfolk Southern has a relativley small (two tracks inside a building I think) facility at the East Wayne Yards in New Haven, Indiana. They also have a few tracks outside for storing cars. It is compact and very modelable. And , at Logansport, Indiana there is a contract repair shop in a portion of the old Pennsylvania shops complete with a working transfer table…
You might try a major library and see if they have bound volumes of RR trade publications such as Railway Age and Progressive Railroading for photos. Contract repair shops have been around for a long time but their numbers have increased in the last 20 years or so. This increase is mainly due to the increase in the number of non-railroad owned cars. Class One railroads have reduced the size of their owned fleets, thus almost 70% of the fleet is now either shipper or lessor owned. The major railroad’s labor agreements usually required work done on their own equipment to be performed in their own shops. One exception was when a car was off line on another railroad and needed more than minor repairs, Rather than have to ship the car all the way home the car could be sent to a closer contract repair shop. Since private car owners have always been able to contract the work out, thus the recent increase in the number of independent repair shops.
Depending on the extent of work being done these facilities can be nothing more than a siding with a tool shed to large facilities covering acres of land with mutiple tracks and buildings. In addition to repair shops there are also facilities that do clean outs of covered hoppers, tank cars and box cars.
A google search of some of the larger contract repair companies will probably give you some additonal information. Progress Rail Services, Rescar, Transco, The Andersons, Greenbrier, and GATX are some of the big ones.
I’ve quoted you together because I think your answers are closely related.
I’m aware from my research of both local repairs and RIP tracks. I would suggest that the practices go back much earlier than the 1880s. I suspect that getting the work done promptly ans as-and-where needed only began to be sorted out (and then codified) with the establishement of the ARA (or was it the AAR… I can never tecall which one came first).
Main reason I’m waffling on about this is that my intro to US RR came through a resource of US RR professional journals starting from about the 1870s (if not earlier). One of the things that I loved reading through was the monthly reports of settlements of car repair disputes. They were far more entertaining than CSI, Murder She Wrote and all tha
Here is an open sided car repair shop at the CSX yard at Hialeah, FL. Depending on how you flip the picture, the building was in the process of getting a new roof.
This photo shows the open ended car repair shop at the Florida East Coast rail yard approximately six kilometers south west from the above CSX operation.
Not sure if you are seeing the same thing, I haven’t seen any cylinders in gons, but to the NE there is a long string of green UP MofW flat cars with concrete ties on them. Up near the Brandt truck and the MofW equipment.
There is a trainload of old wood ties up near Bob Boozer Drive and Pacific St. By the way, just north of Pacific St. is Pacific control point, with a pair of crossovers. The track north and west of Pacific is Rule 9.14 current of traffic and the track south and east of Pacific is CTC.
If you scroll down the main to the right you will find a small yard (102nd St and F St) and a very large industry that makes Kelloggs cereal. Down by 84th St are the two engines the local switcher uses and if you look closely you can find the caboose in the yard the local uses for shoving moves. Then down by 72nd St there is another industry support yard.
at the time of the PC merger, the PRR at Rose Lake (E St Louis) had what they called a “spot shop”. it was a big metal building with 2 tracks running through it. each track would hold a couple of regular length cars or one long one. cars were fed into the shop from yard track number 19 which was the designated bad order track. cars were pulled into and through the building with “rabbits” running between the rails. when repairs were completed the car was kicked out the other end of the building by the rabbit.
this operation was for light or running repairs only and all the heavy work was done at another location called the old rip where there were about 5 tracks all paved with concrete.
the great thing about this system was the tracks on the west end of the spot shop could be filled off number 19 about once every trick and the finished cars could be pulled off the tracks at the east end and reclassified in the east bound yard.
Not sure how relevant this is, but I found this pic of the car shop in Owosso, MI, while I was digging up pics of TSBY 389. (the locomotive I’m currently obsessing over at the LHS)
Here’s a bird’s eye of Delta Tube in Holly, Michigan, served by CSX. They repair mostly autoracks, but you’ll occasionally see box cars and various flats.
Here’s a bird’s eye of TTX in Waterford, Michigan, served by CN. They’ll get various TTX cars in for repair.
