Often, when I’m placing a structure like a small industry or freight house I have the mindset that the dock has to be snug right up against the car floor. This might be true where a lift truck or automobiles have to be loaded, sometimes with a dock-plate, but for most LCL work and the ubiquitous freight houses found on our layouts, you can see that they can set back off the right-of-way some distance and a loading plank with tapered and braced ends can be kept nearby.
The fellow in the photo is my dad’s brother-in-law, Stanley McKenzie. He was the agent at Warren, New Hampshire. I can’t say for sure that this is actually Warren, though as a photo of that station shows a siding at the freight house.
Just a thought, but it looks like that there may have been another track between the current one and the platform when the freight house was built. Sometime along the line that track was removed. That would explain the old photograph.
I base this assumption on the different ground levels on the platform end of both the station building, and, what I presume is the freight house in the second photo, to the building, Stanley is loading into.
I posted the second photo in response to Ray who mentioned a second track. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to post the photo of the depot even if the location couldn’t be identified. A lesson to us all — get those old photos in your shoebox identified while you still can! Stanley died 60 years ago and my dad 30 years ago, the only two people who would know the details [sigh]
I guess I should have left out the ambiguity and said “This station is not Warren” but at the time I had posted the top photo I really hadn’t compared the two all that closely.
Still, two is better than one when it comes to seeing old photos [:D]!
Ed, I have done some considerable research on large downtown freight houses.
Although your photo appears to be a smaller freight house, I can point out that large “downtown” freight houses often has as many as four tracks for loading and unloading freight. The freight cars, almost always 40’ box cars, would be spotted so that the workmen could cross over from one car to another which would be lined up side-by-side on the four tracks.
Large freight doors in the walls of the freight houses were installed at appropriate distances to match the box car doors. The freight house platforms were built to match the height of the box car floors.
Large wood planks were laid to permit hand carts or forklift trucks to easily reach the box car floors from the platforms, and multiple planks were laid between the side-by-side box cars on the four tracks to permit the workmen to gain access to the box cars on the more remote tracks.
Ed,Did you notice the blue flag protection for each cut of cars being unloaded while the Fourth cut was not under blue flag protection in the photo?
One thing about old photos that I learn over the years is, some times you gotta think outside of the box and then take a closer look…Those old photos will reveal a treasure chest full of information.
I’ll bet it took a lot of coordination to pull a cut out of there.
Speaking of the blue flags, I see there are two on each cut. My guess is that the car department is responsible for one flag and the bridge plate and loading gang use the other.
It looks like one flag is still there in the shadows, up on the grab iron. Hard to see in the photo. Car knocker might be waiting for his helper to come back before he takes it down? Or is that flag for the loading crews since the other flag is made to hang near the angle-cock where you have a better chance of seeing it.
There’s an external air compressor w/tank at the facility, that keeps air in the brake lines of the cars when loading/unloading to prevent the cars from moving. That’s why the Blue flag is at the air hose shut off valve. The same thing is done at all the Intermodal loading/unloading terminals…a crane could move a whole cut of cars by just sliding a trailer into the fifth wheel hitch on flat cars to lock it. All the air supply lines are underground at the CSX Intermodal yard where I worked as a crane operator. A lot easier than messing with the brake wheel and safer.
Stanley_Warren_8-36 by Edmund, on Flickr
