This would seem a bit odd to me- did this happen in real life? Often industries would unload from multiple tracks by putting ramps between spotted cars and pull the loads from the “outboard” car through the “inboard” cars. This would mean the cars right next to the dock or even the center track could not be moved until the cars using them as a bridge were (un)loaded as well. Or the railroad would have to perform “internal industry” moves to shuffle the cars closer to the dock as they were unloaded.
I would think the crossover in front of 1600 4th street is too close to the one at 1700 4th street. Is there even room to leave a car between the two? If so what industry is it servicing? I would move that crossover to the left about 6". So a car spotted at 1600 doesn’t have to be moved to get to 1500.
Most produce and meats moves at nighttime and gone by sunrise to the local City Butchers and Resturants etc.
It is my experience that produce markets generally divide companies by groups of floors … sorta like a rowhouse. Your produce company “Munchie Foods” will own or lease the basement, ground floor/dock and then any of the upper floors plus an elevator and a certain amount of ground space outside to move the product.
Soggy Foods will be right next door with thier own space and both companies are literally elbow to elbow trying to keep each other’s stuff from mingling.
The first floor is generally open to either rail or truck. There is also the desk with a phone where most of the buying and selling is done. Around that desk is generally samples of product sitting in boxes for the vendors coming in from the city to view and choose product for the next business day’s commerce in thier resturants and butcher houses.
Some produce are sold directly from railcars. It is my understanding that Baltimore had floats with Bananna cars in reefers on that float sold directly to the dock. The people will come up to the float and make the purchase and the crew transfer the product from the reefer, to the deck of the float and thence to the dock.
Other market areas generally had track in pairs with a flat paved surface every two tracks. There groups of reefers by company such as A&P or others are managed by foremen and loaded directly to trucks. In off hours these tracks are sometimes used by passenger trains to load during high capacity events like troop movements or special events that is drawing lots of people.
Well, if it floats your boat. Not realistic at all. This similar layout from 1994 is a lot more like real life and even then is still a bit artificial.
Good question! The Old Dog understands that working RR cars on multiple tracks from one platform was common practice at freight terminals & stations. But whether the practice was used at other places is unknown.
There is about 12" or two cars lengths between them. But moving the crossover to the left by about 6" might be a excellent idea.
Joking aside this plan could benefit greatly from custom turnouts, double slips, etc. You’re loosing a lot of maneuvering room by trying to use fabricated turnouts.
If any situation justified custom trackwork, this would be it.
Other than that, your barge is much too short to service the number of industries. I don’t know what you plan on the immediate right of your layout, but on my layout I have to have space to walk by. I am planning a drop hinge two tracks wide to allow switching. Adding 3-4 feet to your barge would be a significant operational improvement–sort of a makeshift hinged cassette.
I’m also having trouble picturing a prototype, not that it is important. Why would a bunch of industries congregate so tightly on an island with no service other than a barge when there are places like Nevada and Delaware.
It was very common up until the 1960’s (when overall traffic dropped off). It was particularly common around freight houses, wharehouses, food distribution centers, LCL shippers, anyplace that would use primarily boxcars and deal with a high volume of traffic.
True! But I happened to be using RTS 7.0 which for some strange reason only includes Atlas products;-)
A longer barge would be nice, but it would be harder to handle. It would be nice to be able to have a set of cassettes that could be slipped in from the right end. Otherwise, putting cars on and off the layout will be troublesome due to the center location of the barge.
Try the old Wallabout Yard in Brooklyn, NY. I replaced the team yard with a produce market and meat house row to save space and add interest. At one time, the freight rates for such that shippers on the island could compete with mainland firms.
and purchase the non-free-ware version of the program. One of the libraries included is for Peco HO track. That would make “goodies” like double slip turnouts and three way turnouts available. The only catch is that the price is a little high.
None of the programs do custom track out of the box, but the CAD programs allow you to design custom trackwork. XtrkCAD, free, does this. However, the learning curve for this might be steep. With XtakCAD at least you can run your track “as if” the custom trackwork was there. But if it is just double slips you are looking for XtrkCAD has a few in their inventory.
The reason I dislike RTS is not that it is propietary, it is because its way of handling trackwork limits your thinking to what it can do.
I could not stand the Xtrak one moment longer. Too much tiny fiddling with each section of track. I tossed it and got the box of track out and let em flop I make more progress this way.
There is a lot to be said for pencil & paper. Another approach might be to draw & cut out scale card broad mockups of the track sections, then use them for planning.
I have XtrkCAD, but have never been able to get it to function. It is probably a “good” product, but the Old Dog is missing a basic concept or operating approach some where. I also have CAD program, but one would need to draw each of the components at least once.
The Old Dog likes the concept of taking a set of standardized components and seeing what one can do with them, be it Lego blocks or sectional track.
To get back to the original project, the more I look at that design, the less I like the location of the car float in the center of the layout. One would need to reach over cars in the foreground to place or remove cars from the layout. Going to a “L” shape then putting in a curve to bring the car float to the front along one side of the “L” might make more sense.
XtrkCAD does not work like RTS. You don’t add sections of track rather you place track as place holders and join them. IF you try to take sectional track and add them, you would be spinning your wheels like you suggest.
For instance: to make a 4 x 8 loop you create a 22" radius circle and put it on the end of the layout. You duplicate that circle and put it on the other end of the layout. Then you use the connect track tool to join the circles. The computer trims the excess. Elapsed time about 30 seconds.
I’ve made that comparison before. RTS is like trying to make a car out of tinker toys. You can get the general concept of the car, but it still looks like it was made from tinker toys.
In this project, pencil and templates might be the way to go. But even that is limited. Dense track with custom trackwork rarely follows the templates of standard turnouts. It kinda weaves and bobs to make things fit.
I like the idea of a redesign. An L shape could make it so the the drop down extension works.
For almost 75 years, the Erie (followed by the EL) operated a yard in Manhattan at 28th St served by a car float. The yard’s capacity varied over the years, but at one point had a capacity of 105 cars. I don’t have any firm data regarding the size of the barge; however, it appeared to have comprised 3 tracks that may have held 12-15 cars. The float may have been the same. Available operating data for one year indicates a probable average of incoming at 20-25 cars/day counting 365 days or closer to 30/day for a 300-day year. The latter might be closer to the truth, easily accomodated by as few as 2 barge trips per day (more likely 3 to meet schedules of the trains on mainland NJ). And, yes, cars were unloaded through each other into the freight houses; at one time as many as 5 tracks could be so handled. therefore, the proposed plan is not so far-fetched although the Erie trackage was simpler in a larger area.
As for model rr cad, permit me to once again suggest the smoother, safer, more reliable Macs running a simple, easily customizable program called Empire Express. No fancy bells and whistles, just single-line track that connects very well and with many libraries, including W-S. I did redo the W-S curved turnouts when I discovered that the mfr’s published inside radii are incorrect (was not a difficult job).
