Did I read, many years ago, something on freight houses designed to stand between standard and narrow gauge railroads? where actual cars couldn’t be interchanged by swapping trucks?
I’m looking for something that would scale out to about two feet in On30–about a hundred feet long.
Bob
In most cases, the trucks were not swapped. This gets a lot of attention in the hobby and enthusiast press, so it seems more common than actually was the case.
Often (perhaps even usually), there was only a transfer platform between the narrow gauge and standard gauge tracks. Merchandise was moved across the platform by manual labor from a narrow gauge boxcar to a standard gauge boxcar or vice versa.
If you were to add a freight house, it should obviously be between the narrow gauge and standard gauge tracks and surrounded by platforms. But just the platform would do (and was all many prototypes had).
Byron
Model RR Blog
Three prototype transfer situations, one of which still exists:
Tracks of 600mm and 1067mm gauges on opposite sides of a closed freight house. Sacked goods (material that didn’t take kindly to being wet) were moved from the NG through the freighthouse to mainline boxcars by manual labor. The house also contained a pump - mainline tank cars were pumped into a NG tank. (Don’t know what the liquid was - could have been oil or some chemical compound.)
Tracks of 762mm and 1067mm gauges on opposite sides of an open, roofless platform with a pillar crane on one end. Everything went from mainline to NG - parts ranging from electrical power transformers and other powerplant supplies to foodstuffs and clean laundry for hot spring resorts with no other access to the outside. Only trash and dirty laundry came back down the NG.
a massive spread of open-air tracks, 762mm gauge from one end, 1067mm gauge from the other, with logs dry-stacked between. One pair of mainline tracks and one NG track were spanned by a transfer crane - the only things transferred were logs. Other items were delivered at the mainline freight station and moved across town to the narrow gauge by - truck. (In earlier days there might have been a rail connection, but not in 1964.)
Note, too, that there wasn’t a millimeter of dual-gauge track in any of the places I described. The closest approach was a NG track that stub-ended at the end of a depressed mainline spur. NG rolling stock arriving on mainline flat cars could be run across temporary bridge rails to reach the NG system.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I’m been working on designing a small interchange between my 1900-era coastal Oregon narrow gauge logger come common carrier, and a standard gauge short line that had (has?) transcontinental aspirations. The standard gauge picked Charleston (Coos Bay) as the next San Francisco and had built east as far as Roseville to tie to the Oregon & California (shades of the ill-fated Oregon Pacific, but located further south at a port with more potential). Meanwhile, the narrow gauge line used Port Orford as a dog hole port to load lumber. The narrow gauge line extended into the Umpqua River drainage upstream of Roseville at the fictional town of Lebanon to interchange with the standard gauge, providing access via rail to the Willamette Valley and California.
So far, I have very little information on prototype freight transfer facilities of that era, and in that neck of the woods. So I have been “imagineering” what my free-lance prototypes might realistically have done for interchange.
Swapping trucks is a solution I don’t like, so I have ruled that out. AFAIK, swapping trucks was only used in a few locations. Special trucks were needed to let the over-size standard gauge cars ride on the narrow gauge rails without derailing.
Hand labor would be common, especially in the smaller towns characteristic of Southern Oregon. A platform between the box or flat cars would be especially helpful for most loads. Given the dimensions of the narrow gauge cars of the era, I would want the transfer platform to be between 8 and 12ft wide. More, and too much effort is needed to transfer loads. Less, and there is not enough room to manuver awkward loads. Given the prevailing winter rains and occasional snow, at least some of the platform should be covered. A small freight house on the platform would work for temp storage of LCL freight. A boom crane towards
If it was one commodity, like say ore being transferred from the narrow to the std gauge, they’d often have the narrow gauge on an elevated trestle with chutes going down to the std gauge hoppers or gondolas below.
I suspect a platform or maybe a platform with a small shed of some type would be much more common than a medium to large freight house…if there was that much freight being trans-loaded that it justified building the extra transfer yard trackage and the construction of a freight house and such, they’d probably just find a way to convert the narrow gauge to std gauge so cars could be interchanged normally.
For example here in MN there were a couple of 3’ lines like the Minnesota Midland built in the late 1870’s that were bought in the 1880’s by the Milwaukee Road. By 1903 all of them had been converted to standard gauge by the Milwaukee.
I have seen pictures that showed men shoveling sand from a standard hopper to a 2 ft gauge gondola.
Trestles were also used for transfering coal from narrow gauge to standard gauge hoppers.
Oddly enough, the Ma&Pa in it’s early years built a trestle to transfer coal from standard gauge hoppers to their own standard gauge hoppers to avoid per deim charges.
Enjoy
Paul
I agree with all the above.
By the way, the facilities at Owenyo, CA on the SP were pretty efficient (wooden platform, small overhead crane, and trestle ore dump). Of course, the nature of the transfer facilities will be related to the types of products shipped and their volume.
What’s neat about transfer points is that each transfer point is equivalent to two industries, as well as showing off the difference in scale of equipment and track.
Mark (author of the May 1971 MR article “Dual-gauge transfer terminal”)
Mark, I’ll have to look up that article. By the way, I just finished a track plan which includes Owenyo. You probably also know about two more transfer points at Owenyo beyond those you mentioned in the post.
There was an end-on dock that allowed narrow gauge rolling stock to be rolled on- or off a standard gauge flatcar. This was mainly for heavy off-site locomotive rework and inspections, but was probably also used to deliver freight cars transferred from abandoned 3-foot-gauge lines.
There was also a pump house and oil storage facility (near the standard gauge wye) where standard gauge tank cars were apparently unloaded. I have not figured out exactly where the narrow gauge cars were loaded (it could have been the n.g. locomotive tank, which was apparently connected by undergound pipe to the standard gauge pumphouse). The SP narrow gauge kept at least one oil tankcar right up until abandonment for company use, since steamer #9 was the only back-up for the narrow gauge diesel.
Although I have not found it on any maps, there could also have been a livestock transfer area in earlier eras, but that’s a lading that can move under its own power.
Byron
Model RR Blog
Byron, I was aware of the railroad equipment transfer facility… While I’d always presumed there was a facility for transferring fuel for the n.g. locomotives as well as for petroleum products serving the distributers in Laws, I’ve seen no photos or narrative about them. If the recent book published by the SPH&TS (author Joe Dale Morris) covers that aspect, it would be worthwhile to purchase my third book on the Owens Valley branch.
Mark
Yep, the petroluem jobbers in Laws are a bit of a mystery.
Thanks, friends (old and new)!
Preliminary notes suggest the On30 Neosho, Stella, & White River module will be transfering mostly apples. This will be my first quarter-inch project since giving away my Marx set around 1960, and when the eBay brass R50b arrived yesterday it just blew me away.
I’m presuming my narrow gauge outfit will transport fruit in ventilated box and assigned stock cars, while the transfer will be to the static express reefer and an X-29 for lcl etc. You can call the standard gauge Frisco, KCS, or whatever, but I’m sticking with the universal Pennsy cars for the background (who? me biased?).
Some interchanges between narrow gauge and standard gauge were VERY basic. The Tuscarora Valley in Pennsylvania interchanged with the PRR at Port Royal. The interchange was a track parallel to a PRR siding. The narrow gauge track was slightly elevated so the car floors would be at the same level. Then it was a simple matter of laying down a few planks to move freight from one car to the other. Livestock was handled the same way with a few extra boards to fence in the opening. Coal and ore was hand shoveled between gondolas. There also was a station for passengers, mail, and LCL.
IIRC the Monson 2 footer in Maine had the same kind of interchange.
That was probably the Monson, which was pictured in Moody’s book. They also had a freighthouse-looking building between another track and the SG.
The EBT had a large coal proscessing plant between the NG and SG.
The WP&Y had tubs that carried ore transferred from truck, to rail, to bulk ship loading.
And that’s the difference, the narrow gauge cars usually had lower floors so the tracks were at a different height across the dock.
Part of the issue with transferring trucks is the difference in the brake rigging connections. plus the standard gauge cars had couplers that were higher than narrow gauge cars and in many cases smaller couplers. The EBT had to have coupler adapters to run standard gauge cars.
I don’t have access to my book colection to confirm but I am pretty sure there is a photo that clearly shows the NG at Owenyo CA was not raised. The transfer platform was sloped so it matched the car floor heights. NG height on one side SG height on the other.