I was doing some research today on the P&LE and PRR in Beaver Falls and New Brighton PA today and found one case where there were two switchback sidings off the same track, and one of them was a double!
New Brighton is (timetable) west of Conway PA. When the main line was moved next to the river in the 1920’s a track came off the WB line to connect to the old main further inland which had been severed 0.4 miles east of and 3.1 miles west of the the new connection. The first switchback required a movement WB on the old main and a back-up to a box plant at the east end of the old main.
Continuing WB on the old main you first had enter one stub track (the “Horn Track”) then back to an EB siding and another EB branch that went 2 miles up a 3+% grade along the hill face. At the top of the hill there was another short switch back to get to another group of industries.
In Model Railroad Planning 2005 there was a letter from somebody looking for examples of switchbacks. Can somebody post the address so I can contact them?
The fire maps also showed several cases trailing and facing point spurs coming off a single track with a crossing where they ran over each other.
I was surprised by two things looking at the 1912 and 1921 industries. First that nearly every business of any size had a coal trestle on the siding, or even on a second siding. I would have thought there would be much more wagon carriage/guys with shovels type of unloading rather than the construction of trestles and cribs. Secondly was the diversity of industries. There were steel works, pottery works, a chemical & acid works, Cudahy & Armour meat houses, brick works, steel fabricators, a “borax and boracic acid” plant, lumber and construction supplies, a cork plant, a “wood, fibre, & plaster” plant, porcelain and enamel works, Standard Horse Nail Co. (which survives today!), a china factory, glass companies, the “Impervious Varnish Co.”, and an
The rationale for all the coal trestles is, as usual, economic. Putting in a trestle and taking delivery in hopper loads was a lot less expensive than paying Joe’s Coal Yard to deliver by the wagon load - especially before the tilt-bed dump truck was developed. The trestle (or even an extra siding) undoubtedly paid for itself in a couple of years.
Back when everything traveling any distance moved by rail, the railroads would go to almost any extreme to get a siding alongside anything that would ship or receive carload freight. John Armstrong, in Track Planning for Realistic Operation, has a plan view of industrial trackage in a port area that demonstrates that to an extreme. Anyone who thinks that it is exaggerated never ralifanned the Brooklyn waterfront in the '50’s.
Nowadays, unfortunately, almost all of those places are served by truck.
in most industries , as shipment by rail (and now by truck) got faster and faster it became more economical to ship items from one plant to everywhere in the country rather than have a small plant in every area to serve only local customers . of course having one large company is also more efficient than having many small ones , so mergers and aquisitions have also concentrated industries
Of course, but what struck me was that these industries existed here. These weren’t just products for local consumption (How much borax and boracic acid can a county of 111,000 really use? How many cork insulation bricks?), so it wasn’t simply a case of “transport costs inhibit centralization”. This stuff was going out, too. People tend to think of steel or coal when mentioning western PA, but it was obviously much more diverse.
I guess that’s what really surprised me: That there were so many and so varied industries even capable of shipping/receiving by the car load frequently enough to warrant a siding. Both these towns had pretty large freight houses just blocks away from the sidings. (BF had two - one PRR and one P&LE.) For their size, I would’ve figured that most of them would be lucky to consume/make one carload a month of anything, hence they would be more likely to use the team tracks and platforms.
Dear Aardvark,
Ed Vondrak, 8219 Burn Court, Indianapolis, IN 46217-4697 is the one who asked for examples of switchbacks into industrial spurs. I sent him maps of many examples of industrial switchbacks in central California. Haven’t heard back on whether the information was used. I’ve been toying with the idea of writing my own article on the subject if nothing comes of it.
The most prodigious example was the Concord Naval Weapons Depot where there was a multitude of short, single-ended sidings serving individual ammo storage bunkers. Another “weird” example was a circle with spurs coming off at a steel mill, an arrangement also seemingly common of military warehouse operations. Also found several branchlines (like Davenport) leading to cement plants with the switchback serving as a switching lead to one or more run-around tracks to these large, single industries. There were also a surprising number in South San Francisco, Santa Clara, Stockton and other cities where switchbacks were necessary to access an industry because of obstructive buildings or streets. The Alameda Air Station was an excellent example of switchbacks serving wharfs and warehouses. The Mare Island Naval Shipyard also had quite a few switchbacks. I particularly like the example where a spur turned south from the “mainline” in order to access a structure on the north side of the tracks: the spur switchbacked and crossed the “mainline” at 90 degrees.
I got my information from government topographical maps. I have a program called “Maptech” with a bunch of CDs containing detailed maps of California. Haven’t been able, however, to get the program to work since I bought a new computer.