Rarely modeled prototype industrial track arangements I noticed in article on LA Jct Railway by Charlie Slater in The Warbonnet , Third Quarter 2003
LAJCT by Donald Schmitt, on Flickr
John Armstrong presents a number of possible industrial yard designs in John Armstrong Freight Yards mrpdf0.pdf which is available as a download from Kalmbach.
Lots of interesting spot diagrams on the net, if you e.g. search for SPINS , CLIC or ZTS maps/diagrams/schematics.
Here is an example: http://wx4.org/to/foam/sp/spins/books.html (click on the link to the PDF files of the “San Jose”, “San Franciso” or “San Francisco Peninsula”.
Here is another example: http://www.multimodalways.org/archives/rrs/CR/CR%20ZTS/CR%20ZTS.html
Smile,
Stein
Hi gentlemen,
Stein you made my day. You are the web-wizzard.
Paul
Hi,
This may be obvious to most - but maybe not…
Lineside companies and the area RR work very closely in laying out trackage for the particular company. I was involved at two new refineries in Joliet, Illinois in the early ‘70s - both being on land formerly owned by the Santa Fe. In both instances, the refinery folks worked very closely with the RR to meet the companies’ needs - and to make switching as efficient as possible. As I recall, in both cases the placement of track scales was a “big deal”, and it took awhile to get it resolved.
Also, it is very desireable to have a close bond between the two factions, even down to the operations level - meaning the train crew and refinery yard crew. And, the train crew must be very keen as to what they are doing on the company property - particularly in a refinery setting.
I also spent time in a large refinery in Beaumont Texas, and they - having been in existence “forever” - had their own switch loco and crew. So, Company personnel would pick up cars in the refinery and set them on a designated siding on RR property, and pick up cars in the same manner. Yes, I did hitch a ride or two during my time there.
Just wanted to throw this all out - not sure if it means anything to the design or operation of a layout…
The Central Produce Terminal in Los Angeles had an identical saw tooth profile as the one pictured, as did the bannana transload terminal in San Pedro on the Pacific Electric, I agree it is rarely modled, the CPT was served by the SP,PE & Santa Fe and numerous trucking concerns and was a massive operation in its day. This offset track profile was common among industries employed in the citrus/produce industry in Southern California and was not uncommon.
Dave
The first one on the left isn’t really practical if only a single car is spotted where you placed the oval (and I don’t think only a single car was placed there on the LAJ, from looking at the same article you cite).
The second and fourth are reasonably common on model railroad designs. The third was pretty rare in real life except for very large installations because it adds two sets of points and two frogs and doesn’t add much in switching flexibility versus the second.
So in general, yes, it’s good to keep some of these ideas in mind – but I don’t think I’d consider them “rarely modeled”.
The saw-tooth arrangement in the photo was fairly rare in real-life and takes quite a bit of room compared to a longer track with many “spots”. They seem to have been most often used for produce and other perishable commodities, where the inefficiencies of switching one or two cars per move was balanced by the need to keep the cars moving that are being unloaded in an unpredictable order. Typically, real-life railroaders seem to prefer to pull or spot a longer string of cars with each move and do so less often.
This industrial-track arrangement for a cement plant is interesting… There are three switchbacks. One tail serves double-ended spurs) and the other two ultimately serving two stub-ended tracks which I bet were on a grade so cars could be moved over the coal dump using gravity. The switchback serving as a switching lead to several spur tracks wasn’t uncommon as I’ve seen it at other locations.
Mark, that track layout at Creal is a paragon of efficiency!
Every arriving train pulls to the end of the switchback at the left, presumably after stopping to drop a switchtender at the first turnout. After that, every spotting move to a dead-end spur is into a facing-point switch - even those two long coal spurs at the upper right. Then, after the spots are made, the empties are assembled, the loco runs around the empties, pulls the loads from under the bins onto the right switchback tail and backs them down on the empties. Finally, pump up the air while walking the train, putting the rear-end device in place in the last coupler, back onto the left switchback, set and lock the switch and highball for Mojave. One runaround, and almost every meter of loco movement with cars coupled on. Nice.
Here in the northeastern reaches of Sin City there are three switching areas. One is a, `tree,’ with all sidings facing the same way and no runaround. One is a multi-track balloon loop. The third is more traditional, with a runaround, sidings facing both ways and a switchback at the end. All of them would require some serious compressing to fit on any layout smaller than supermarket size in HO.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in a Southern Nevada garage)
I have looked a lot of track plans in recent months- on-line, in track plan books (at least 30 in my collection), complete Model Railroader collectiion, 45 years of Railroad Model Craftsman, Complete Model Railroad Planning and Great Model Railroads, and general books on model railroading dating back to the 1950’s.
I stick by my contention that these arrangements are rarely modeled.<
Mark, as you probably know, the switchbacks at Creal are primarily due to elevation differences (as are many real-life switchbacks). Creal is literally in the middle of nowhere and if not for the elevation differences there would be no reason for all of the switchbacks.
deleted
Byron,
Thought of you when I posted the Creal track schematic: you “hating” switchbacks. I think switchbacks are interesting/useful as long as industries aren’t located on the tails and there is a logical reason for them, as opposed to switching puzzles…
I don’t think anyone “hates” switchback leads as such - if they have sufficient length for both loco, inbound and outbound cars at the same time, or if there is some convenient place nearby to leave the inbound cut of cars while you pull the outbound cut of cars.
What Byron has argued against is two things:
-
overly short switchback leads, so you have to shuttle e.g 5 cars from an industry track out one car at a time through a switchback lead just long enough for a loco and one car.
-
having industries located along the short switchback lead as well, so you have to pull cars from the lead to create work space to go in and then start shuttling cars out of the industries one by one.
Anyways - having a crossover from one track to a parallel industry track with several customers along the industry track is reasonably prototypical and fun to switch, if not compressed too much. Say something like this:
In this case one wouldn’t use the rightmost parts of the top and bottom track to switch the leftmost part of the track - the engine would stay at the left end all along, but one could access the innermost (rightmost) end of both tracks without disturbing cars at the outermost (leftmost) end of the tracks. Off spot cars could go on the center track.
Fits about 20 40’ cars, four industries, one with 8 spots, 2 with 5 spots, one with two spots (and located on the same track as anot
Emphasis mine. Switchbacks with industries on each wing that must be emptied before an adjacent non-related industry may be switched are the switchbacks that I find unrealistic and tedious. And we can all agree that gimmick is way overused on model railroads.
That’s why I posted my comments on Creal, so that someone reading this thread wouldn’t misunderstand the reason those switchbacks are there (which, again, is to deal with elevation changes).
In the original post and the drawing on the left, this arrangement would be used when a single industry has multiple spots. The cars spotted on the piece of track without the oval could be a spot where the spotting of cars has a different schedule than the ones with the oval. Railroads do not move cars that are being loaded or unloaded just to spot another one at a different place. The locomotive would work these as though they were not connected, but they have the option to push a car to the “next section” and access it from the industrial running track.
The center two are common in cities. Picture the “X” as in a street perpendicular to the street with the industrial running track. The space taken up by the “X” is in the street. This arrangement can be achieved on our model railroads and save space and also look interesting.
These situations existed on the Reading Company in the city of Philadelphia.
I know a lot of people disagree but operating a model railroad with sidings dedicated to each industry is a lot more fun than serving more than one industry on a single siding.
Emphasis mine. Switchbacks with industries on each wing that must be emptied before an adjacent non-related industry may be switched are the switchbacks that I find unrealistic and tedious. And we can all agree that gimmick is way overused on model railroads.
Agreed and my 9 1/2 years working as a brakeman I never seen 2 separate industries on one industrial siding or a switchback where a car at industry A needed moved in order to switch industry B…That’s another model railroad track planing gimmick that IMHO should be forgotten.
I will also mention the industry owns their siding not the serving railroad.
In fact if a industry track becomes unsafe the serving railroad can and will embargo the industry track until its repaired…
If modeling the first half of the twentieth century, a much under-appreciated/modeled is the double ended siding. Nothing like being able to serve the industry from both directions.
Here in the mid-1950s on the Southern Pacific San Ramon Branch in Walnut Creek, CA:
hi
The big thing with industrial tracks is that the shunting is done in a logical way.
You don’t shift one lot of cars out the way to get to a second industry it just doesn’t happen in the real world.
Yet you see a lot of it on the model world.
Another thing that surprises me is the reluctance to use sharp curves to get into the industrial area. They can be in tight and awkward spots particularly if the industry was there first and the RR second.
Admittedly you have to be careful with sharp curves so your trains can get in and out without problems.
But there is a lot of sharp curved industrial trackage out there.
Remember we often have one and two car industries that in the real world would be serviced by road,and we service it by rail. So our empires have a reason to be there.
Its all compromise to get desirable operation on to our railroads.
regards John
Era, location and amount of traffic dependant. Happened more in the first half of the 20th century, when there were more small shippers/consignees and more single carload traffic.
Smile,
Stein