i’m wondering what the prototype RR would prefer to do.
I assume a single industry may have more than one car spotted on a single spur. Moving a car at the end of the spur may require temporarily moving cars in front of the end car and then moving them back to their original locations once the end car is spotted.
In an area where there are multiple industries served by a RR, i assume it would be easier to switch cars if each industry has a separate siding. But when the industries/wharehouse are close together, I assume it may be difficult for each industry to have it’s own spur. In that case, might the RR use a single long spur to serve several industries and like above, would it be a problem that cars for different industries would have to be temporarily moved to spot a car at the end of the spur?
in the image below, there is a unused spur that connects to the Northeast corridor about 2 mi to the east. You can see how tracks use to come off the spur, cross Jiffy Rd (where the label is) to serve other wharehouses in the area. You can just make out some old trackage in the driveway below the Rd label for Jiffy Rd.
Would it be realistic for one of those spurs to serve multiple wharehouse on Commerce or Clyde Roads?
would having a single spur and fewer switches benfit the RR, or would the increased workload on crews be too costly?
Multiple industries on the same spur are very common - especially back in the ‘trasition era’. I have seen house tracks behind a depot with multiple elevators and a bulk oil distributor - all on the same siding. Many times there may only be a single car on the spur. But with late summer grain loading, there will be lots of box cars waiting to be loaded at the elevators.
Industries own their sidings not the railroad and switching another industry on the same track can cause lost production and labor time since industry A unloaders will stand idle while the switch crew switches industrial B.
Now if that industry is unloading covered hoppers or tank cars then that is extra work removing the hoses and more production lost…
Now in my 9 1/2 years of railroading I never seen more then one industry on a siding-exception being a team track.
In tighter and older large city urban industrial areas like NYC,LA,SF,Cleveland,Chicago I know not.
About 10 years ago, I worked an addition to a plastic injection molding plant, with rail service by the UP. This is along the former C&NW main line through Pleasant Prairie, WI. There are three such manufacturers on one spur track. The spur runs down to the last plant on the line, and the two plants before it, each have a dead end siding coming off of the spur.
When I was a teenage railfan there were multiple industries on a surprisingly short spur siding off the Chicago & North Western in South Milwaukee WI. The siding was known to the crews as Badger Siding because the primary customer at the end of the spur when it was built in the 1920s was a factory called Badger Malleable, a gray iron foundry if memory serves. Badger had a second track at the far end for shifting loads and empties or perhaps for serving more than one building.
The siding paralleled Davis Avenue, an east west street.
When the spur came off the main it made a sharp curve - essentially the main was north/south and the spur was east/west. The first industry off the spur, on the curve itself in fact, was a Deep Rock oil facility with storage tanks. Not sure whether they stored heating oil or gasoline for the local Deep Rock gas station (long since gone in my time) or both. Still on the curve, box cars would be left for a tannery - it had no loading dock and small carts pulled by a fork lift would drive to the car and unload the untanned hides (whew the smell and the flies!). Where the track started to straighten out a local lumber yard a few blocks away would get lumber, initially by boxcar and normal flatcar, later by center beam flatcar. And sure enough the first time they ever had to unload a centerbeam they didn’t follow the rules, unloaded one side first, and the car tipped over. The tricky thing was Davis Ave extended west right to the CNW main (where Davis Ave ended) so neither the tannery cars or the lumber cars would block Davis Ave. although they sure did intrude onto the street.
As soon as the track became straight a plastic bag manufacturer across the street would get covered hoppers of plastic pellets, often in Center Flow ACF cars. So their unloading hoses and such were across Davis Ave. from the factory itself, which was built in the late 1950s. Sometimes they would get two
I’m working on another Cotton Belt book and found four industries on a single spur on a Fordyce, Arkansas Sanborn map. The industries are a bulk oil dealer, a lumber company, another bulk oil dealer and a cotton seed warehouse. This map dates back some 80+ years so it was common back in those days. See Barriger photo SLSW #131, I’m refering to the spur track next to the southward siding.
I’ve seen lots of those type of industrial leads…Excellent to work since you had lots of room.
BTW…Another reason railroads don’t own the industrial siding is because of the up keep and the railroad retains the right to embargo the track if it becomes unsafe-this was at one time a highly legal excuse to drop a occasional single car customer.
Just took a look at my North Las Vegas industrial neighbors along one branch off the UP’s LA&SL. Each of the three propane dealers has a separate, easily switched siding. There is one long siding behind three industries - believe that is now derelict since there are no vehicles in the parking area serving those buildings. Other buildings backed up to the rails may have rail service, but only one would interfere with switching anything else.
When driving through that area the only standing cars I have ever seen were propane tanks (aka weenies on wheels.)
Los Angeles had an almost entirely single-track spur called Violet Alley that had dozens of industries along it. It was worked in alternate years by UP and SP, and there were connections from both to this track. I haven’t heard specifically how it was worked, but I presume that it was switched at night, with cars being loaded and unloaded during day shift. If industries along a spur take nights off, this would give the railroad the opportunity to switch the spur without disrupting day shift work.
There was a track in Los Angeles known as the “Violet Alley”. The U.P. and the S.P. operated it on alternate years. It ran parallel to Santa Fe Ave. on the east side, north and south of Washington Blvd. It served quite a few industries. There were no run-arounds so the switchmen needed to have everything lined up before they went onto the track.
If an industry on the “Violet Alley”, or for that matter, on any other track had not finished loading or unloading a car at the end of their day, they wrote “baby load” on whatever was handy and taped it prominently on the car. The switchmen were alerted to handle the car gently.
Having several businesses on one track was common in small towns, too. Often you’d have a depot facing the mainline, with a double-ended siding going behind the depot. The siding might have one or two warehouses, a coal and/or oil dealer, and a couple of grain elevators on it.
As described in “Track Planning for Realistic Operation”, multiple industries on one spur were not uncommon. And if it were important to be able to leave one industry’s car alone while an industry further down the spur was being switched, they might install a switch just before the busy industry, and have the track turn out alongside the spur, then curve back in to reach the rest of the industries.
i was thinking about multiple industries all using boxcars or at least those closes to the mainline. I was also assuming that boxcars would be locked up at night. If so, the RR would be able to move cars around at night without disrupting anybody.
on the other hand, i can see that non-boxcars with hoses or inductries that operate at night would a problem.
Before the Staggers act of 1980, the railroad owned all the track. They tended to put in one siding for multiple industries because it was cheaper, and they’d work the spur when they worked it, usually.
After 1980 it’s almost always the industry that owns the siding and pays for it, and the switch. And as mentioned above, industries don’t like their cars being messed with because somebody else needs a car switched. Now that the industry owns the track, they have something to say about it.
Actually even when I worked on the PRR in the mid 60s the industries own their track not PRR…I know this because 3 minor shippers had their track embargoed as unsafe according to the daily and ETT–that was PRR’s way of dumping a small 1-2 car a month customer.
According to what I was taught as a student brakeman PRR track ended at the derail.
It still happens. Not often but I see it. For example I’ve switched grain elevators that had fertilizer dealers located at the end of their siding. two separate companies with different traffic managers. Just takes a bit of coordination between all parties involved. You see it more often these days on team tracks or bulk transfer facilities.
