Where I grew up, in just the space of a couple blocks, the SR main split into a siding and two spurs with part of the switches overlapping the main road into town. Both spurs served a couple businesses on the same track (lumber yard, cotton gin, and a couple warehouses). Just past the siding there was another spur leading to a double switchback to a small business area with a concrete batch plant, couple of gas & oil dealors, another switchback into a cotton mill, and then a branch to two other towns. Nearby town had a switchback iinto a cotton mill with the reverse tail serving a power plant. All this is taken up and gone now, mills all torn down.
One assumption in all the discussion so far is every spur needs daily switching. Yet most small businesses in early 20th century it might be once a week or two. So there would seldom be a conflict requiring moving some cars to spot others.
In the early 20th century it would be hard to say except when cotton was being harvest and maybe daily for shipping bales of cotton to the end users.The lumber yard could go days without seeing a car or could recieve 3-4 cars a week depending on the business…
There’s to many unknowns to say either way.
Be interesting to research the history just to find out.
You raise a good point. Most layouts built for operation tend to switch local customers more often and more intensively than the prototype would do, and this is not just early 20th century. As someone once pointed out, many of the buildings on our layouts could not hold the contents of even one boxcar much less the fresh boxcars we send to them day after day.
Thinking of the mid 1960s in my home town, there were industries such as the huge Bucyrus Erie plant, that were served every day without fail, but even there, the tank cars of gear cutting oil were really rare, and the covered hoppers of foundry sand were almost that rare. Much more common were steel sheet loads and coke for the foundry. .
But a fairly good sized factory that made heavy tables of the kind you see at church suppers received rail loads of pressed board or rolls of formica very irregularly, perhaps as few as one car a month, maybe a month and a half. The local plastics plants received a Center Flo of pellets maybe every week, maybe twice a week, but sometimes weeks would go by without a car (and the prior car would often sit there for long periods as if it was being used as a temporary storage tank) The lumber yard got a flat or boxcar of lumber at irregular intervals. The plant that made electrical switches received tank cars very rarely.
This irregular pattern continued until, in most cases, rail service ceased entirely possibly due to the disinterest of the railroad. In some of these cases the same industries were served by rail as well as truck.
There are car forwarding systems that do not mechnically set out and pick up every session. There are also card based systems that can be set up to be less repetitive. If you have a large enough layout, mixing things up can keep every operating session from seeming just like the last one.
There are car forwarding systems that do not mechnically set out and pick up every session. There are also card based systems that can be set up to be less repetitive. If you have a large enough layout, mixing things up can keep every operating session from seeming just like the last one.
Dave
Dave,You bring up a excellent point…
Even on small switching layouts industries doesn’t need “worked” every time the layout is operated.
I go by a “5 day work week” and rotate the days a industry is switched some days there will only be 1 or 2 cars other days pickup 2 or 3 cars with no setouts.Some days will see 5-6 cars…Other days nothing…
Comparing early-to-mid 20th century practices is like comparing a horse-drawn cart to a WWII deuce-and-a-half to a modern Volvo highway tractor pulling tandem gravel trailers. When road horsepower had four legs per each and highways' were two ruts in the mud, EVERYTHING moved by rail if rail service existed at all. At that time, the railroad would go through all sorts of strange contortions to get a car alongside a customer's door. Shortly after WWII the put a siding in at any cost’ shifted to `keep a siding if it still makes economic sense’ - and an awful lot of small/infrequent customers went to rubber wheelers. Now the railroads don’t even want to talk to a new customer who won’t ship or receive in unit train lots.
Most of us have been swayed by car distribution systems that either oversimplified or overloaded the early 20th century model. How many of us model a situation where most freight cars simply pass through, going from somewhere to elsewhere, with only a daily peddler that may not even switch the local mattress factory?
My own car distribution system is based on waybills that show up on a specific day' of September, 1964 - representing a car request. When that waybill and a suitable car intersect, the waybill goes in a car card. The load (or requested empty) is delivered to the customer in the course of routine operations. The waybill has built-in dwell,’ to allow a reasonable length of time for loading/unloading before being put in the queue for pickup.
Some cars move quickly - open-tops don’t stay long at the larger colliery. That same colliery’s company store might get four or five (10 - 17 ton capacity) box cars a month. The adjacent mine supply warehouse gets an occasional car, and the big machinery flat shows up every third 30 day cycle or so. Exactly what shows up when is somewhat random, because requests may be de
Sorry folks if I created a little confusion. I was trying to comment on the track layout thread over in the layout design board, but somehow created it here.
Chuck, yes, I very much agree with you on how often we switch businesses (calling them industries implies a larger size than they are). On my branch line layout, the ops concept for the single switcher is to bring couple of cars a day to the cotton mill. These could be loads in or empties for loading, but matches fairly well with the rate I saw growing up. The lumber yard or fuel dealer might get one load per week.
The primary town in the area, which was also the hub for two branches, saw 6-10 through trains per day, but only one train dropped or picked up in general. Then all local switching was done by the engine assigned to that town. Not nearly as heavy traffic as the usual model railroad.
In contract, Camp Croft in Spartanburg was major busy all the time with petroleum terminal, chemical plants, and other in a tight area.
A consideration is how the customer used the car. That is if it was unloaded all at once or throughout the week. The RR requests that the cars be unloaded within a specific time frame. But depending on who’s the tail or dog over the decades, flexibility either way can happen, particularly with short lines, etc. Opening both sets of doors, dropping the dock plate takes a little time, some liked to use the cars as storage.
We had a store and concrete ramp on a siding connected to a double ended siding where there were stock yard pens. Many times the only car on the sidings was for the store. When livestock was shipping out it was exciting. If more than one car was at the store or ramp we would move them with a tractor or maybe even a pickup truck to help in unloading or loading. We could easily have one to 12 or so cars altogether. Sometimes the stock cars would be spotted ahead of time, but we wouldn’t load until the loco was there.