I have been looking at a multiple track freight house for the switching layout I am designing and I don’t understand how they were run. I’m looking at pre-WWII era. There were some large freight houses in town. NKP had an operation with five, ten car tracks inside the walls of their structure. The NYC had a freight house that had eight 24 car tracks (192 car capacity). The NYC layout was a dock, one track, a dock, three tracks, a dock, three tracks, a dock, one track, and a dock. The outer docks were attached to the outbound and inbound freight houses and there was a building that connected all of the docks and houses across one end forming a giant U shaped building. The NKP operation was similar, but lacked any intermediate docks.
I am assuming that the railroad would switch an entire track in or out at one move. Is that how it was done? The dock crews would have used span plates between the cars to get access to the cars that were not next to a dock. I would imagine that it required a great number of laborers with hand trucks to move the freight in and out of those boxcars in order to meet the time requirements. I am assuming that the railroad would spot a track full of cars and the freight house crew would have a certain number of days (hours) to unload/load that string of cars. When the cut of cars was finished, it would be switched out and a new string spotted in its place. Please correct me if I’m wrong or I have missed something. Thanks.
Generally the railroad would spot multiple tracks at one time, then the cars would be unloaded, sorted and then reloaded outbound. The freight house would only be switched at set times to give the freight house people time to unload and reload the cars.
The Yahoo group LCL Ops (Less than carload operations) modeling has some discussion about switching freight houses - e.g. Ralph Heiss’ description (in the files section http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LCL_Ops_Modeling/files/Ralph’s%20LVHTRy%20LCL%20Files/) of a freight house schedule for his layout. You have to join the group to read files in the files section.
Actually there was a lot of work involved that many may not know about to include “cherry picking” loads and empties from the string of cars since all cars wasn’t unloaded at the same time.
Know and understand it could take up to two days to unload a fully loaded boxcar by hand -yes freight houses would indeed unload full boxcars for the railroad customers that didn’t have a rail siding recall 90% of the freight moved by rail back in the day and remember the same rules applied for unloading the freight cars-you have x many days to unload a car before being charged a demurrage fee by the owning railroad…
A lot of freight houses in larger cities had a dedicated switch crew.
Even in 1960s Japan handling freight at a railroad-owned freight platform was a labor-intensive operation. At Tachikawa the freight house was adjacent to the main passenger entrance. There were a lot of people among the boxes, crates and drums - and none of them were standing still.
Now you know why the railroads shed the LCL business - and why UPS and FedEx are so darned expensive…
If you’re looking at less-than-carload freight house ops in the 40-ish era, then consider that many times it operated much like UPS does today, with hub-and-spoke networks. There were set times when loads had to be ready to go onto scheduled trains. Different cars had different destinations. Incoming traffic would be broken down between local delivery and that which would be forwarded onto to its final destination via another RR car. Then what was being forwarded goes into the proper car.
Where there were multiple tracks, there were often bridge plates between the dock and each car, so that the loaders could get to every car even if not adjacent to the dock itself. Every so often, the plates have to be pulled so that the loads can be removed and more empties brought in for the next round.
I never worked loading RR cars, but I used to load dozens of grocery trailers every night, involving multiple stops, perishables, and other merchandise mixed in, all to meet a scheduled departure time. Somewhat different, but also very similar in the need to meet a timetable while moving masses of freight, while not tying up all your dock area and/or siding space so you can get things in and out of the facility on time.
Excellent illustration of how complex things can be with a freight house.
Yes, loads were unlikely to be cubed out in such service. RRs usually made sure there was plenty of space to handle the freight from day to day. Even when labor was cheap, it didn’t make sense to pay for stacking stuff up tightly, which also caused increased damage claims in this premium service.
So there was usually space in the car to handle the load most days. They could be packed tight on a busy day of the week and much less so on another day, depending on the route, etc. Holidays, etc caused the need to add extra cars, which could really mess up a daily schedule like your example. That’s one way to add a twist to an operating scheme.
There were ways to speed the unloading, sorting and loading, depending on the size and need at a facility. Electric tugs powered by batteries moved carts in some places. Others used various sorts of conveyors. Forklifts came relatively late on the scene for RR use, so were unlikely to be in use in many facilities in the 40s.
Palletization of loads is a post-war innovation for the most part, although there were a number of proprietary skids and jacks used for moving materials before the simple wooden pallet came into wide use. My favorites are the pallets (3’x6’?) with a set of wheels at one end and a pin at the other. A small wheeled jack is run under the pin, then the handle is pumped to raise this end off the floor, allowing the entire rig to be trundled around easily. There were all kinds of carts that the electric tugs hauled, also, at larger installations.
Thanks everyone for the helpful replies. And Stein, thanks for the write up from the LCL sig article. I’m still waiting for my “application” to be processed/approved from the day you posted the link, so it helps a bunch to see the possible complexity of a freight house operation.
Stein,In a perfect world that operation would work but,I fear not in real railroading or real life…
I have unloaded boxcars manually and by forklift and it takes time due to safety rules-even back in the day there was safety rules in place.I’ve switch warehouses that had several spots and you’re looking close to a hour to switch out the needed cars,spot the empties and respot the cars that we had to move.
At best maybe 3 pulls in a 8 hour shift on a good night.
Of course the method you shared works in our modeling world.
Indeed. Feel free to add 2-3 hours to all durations, if that makes you feel your model railroad is more like “real life”
One thing Ralph has done which is pretty elegant for his model, is that he has arranged his schedule so fast loading or unloading cars (which will unload or load less cargo) will be spotted at the near end of the track, so they can be pulled without pulling the cars further in on the track, in effect giving him the functionality of having more parallel tracks. No moving of cars that aren’t done loading or unloading to get at cars behind them, and then having to re-spot the moved cars afterwards.
Stein,Don’t get me wrong on a large layout that method could keep a operator busy switching the freight house tracks and making transfer runs to and from the yard-perfect! All things aside I like it!
It could be stand alone switching layout as well! [:P]
I too am duious about the frequency of switching. For every switch you have to pull the bridge plates out of the cars on that track, knock off the handbrakes, move the cars, tie down handbrakes ,then put the bridge plates back in. Most large fireght houses I’ve seen had multiple tracks along each platform so that you went through the cars next to the platform to reach the cars on the tracks further away. In 6’30" a switcher has gone into track 1 six times, in 1’50" track 1 is switched four times. Don’t think so.
By the time you add the time to break down and set up the cars to time to switch the cars, thats a pretty short time to turn things around with zero margin for error. If it takes 5" to work the bridge plates and handbrakes and 10 minutes to physically switch the cars (very agressive times) that’s still 20" a switch If I am switching track 1 four times that’s 80 minutes out of a 110 minute period the cars will be inaccesible.
You also have to consider how many switch engines will be required. Making 2 pulls 10 minutes apart is only valuable if you do something with the car. That implies you are going to rush the cars over to some outbound freight train. To pu the track at 4:40 am and 4;50 am that means you have to have 2 switchers standing by to rush the cars in different directions. If you don’t need 2 switchers, then you don’t need two pulls 10 minutes apart out of the sametrack.
Just to be clear - I am not trying to claim that Ralph Heiss’ frequency of switching for his freight house is realistic for a real railroad.
As I replied to Brakie - one probably could add a couple of hours of stay to loading time. And as you point out - pulling two cars on the same track 10 minutes apart probably make little sense. So merge that one pull into two.
But it is a neat model, even if parameters may need to be tweaked. Preferably to somewhere between “so fast that it is no fun” and “so slow that someone will have to pay you real money to get you to do it”
Stein’s right about not nitpicking that example. Sounds like typical model railroader op, overdoing things a bit vs real life. Nonetheless it’s worthwhile as a starting point.
Yeah, generally I wouldn’t expect cars to be pulled, except at the beginning or end of shift or at lunch time. I’ve loaded plenty of semi trailers, never loaded or unloaded freight cars, although I’ve watched people do it and I know it’s a bigger job than a semi. Older cars were smaller, but back then they also didn’t have the material handling equipment we do now.
The mention in the book of positioning cars spotted for early departure on the margins of the main operation is a good one. This way, you only pull a few cars on the outside tracks or spotted in at the end of the dock and replace them with empties. It’s not like they pulled the plates on everything every few hours and rearranged everything. At least it wouldn’t be if I was running it[^o)] I’d expect most switching to be done at shift change or three times a day in recent times, perhaps just twice a day in the bad old 12 hour days.
Sounds like an interesting book - but is there somewhere on that page to download a scanned version of this book from 1912? Or would I just have to order a paper copy from Abe books if I wanted to read the actual text?
I think the way Google has this set up, no, online only and I think you may be limited to viewing a certain number of pages. Google, libraries, and copyright holders/publishers have gone around and around on what’s fair use, etc for the last decade, so the access you get online has varied.
IIRC, didn’t the NMRA reprint this at one time? Maybe I’m thinking of something else? Anyway, abebooks.org is a good place for used books.
Go to Google link, Click on the red button “Read Book”, a menu will open, click on “PDF” , enter Captha, pdf will download which you can save to your computer.
Yes, the book was reprinted by the NMRA. It is out of print.
