This is one of the industries on my module at my club. Below is a picture. I will complete the rest of the fence installation and trimming today (4/10) and finishing touches on the ramp (more reenforcements and details) probably today also. Other than those, thoughts?
BTW the fence is made of thule (pronounced “tool”-used for bridal veils!) and toothpicks for a cost so far of $.39!
Very nice! The only thing I can critisize is the shiny orange trucks, might want to either repaint or weather those. Other than that, it looks great! Ballasting is top-notch![tup]
Thanks for the comments and feedback guys. I know the trucks are too clean. I picked 'em up for $.50/ea and haven’t done anything with them as of yet. I plan on dirtying them up!
I had originally planned for the other track to be used for MoW storage. A place to stash a flat with a pile of ties on it or a hopper of ballast until they’re needed or something like that.
One question I’ve got is how could I make a gate for the rail entrance?
In MR May 2006 there was an article about operating gates for industrial spurs, if you check out Wolfgang Dudler’s excellent website you’ll find more detailed info on how he built them.
One thing that could be added is an overhead crane. This would allow the second track to be used for more than just storage. Otherwise it looks really good.
somethign I might do would be a dock in the middle… one dock, 2 tracks, and the local MOW crew could load a tie or 2 directly on their trucks instead of having to drag the car out to the defect.
But it’s your module, and it’s better than anything I’ve ever built. Looks great!
I am presuming (always a bad idea), that you are modeling a realitively recent era, but not sure how recent. I’m just saying this as the (dozen or so) active team tracks I’ve seen in operation (as opposed to transload centers or the like) are usually 1 or 2 sidings off the main, usually buried in dirt or gravel (one was paved) to the tops of the rails so trucks have free access and room to manuveur, no docks or overhead cranes (there are a few overhead cranes around me, notably in Queens Village off the LIRR main, but I believe that team track is only used for MOW purposes nowadays - shame, as the team track area was elevated and so towered over the surrounding neighborhood). Trucks back up to the boxcars or reefers and load directly from the boxcar door, or if flatbeds pull up by the side. If a pneumatic hopper is spotted in the team track yard, a bulk hopper truck pulls up with it’s own loading equipment.
Something big coming off a flat car onto a flatbed truck, the company will bring it’s own forklift or lift truck or crane to move it.
I guess what I’m saying is that team tracks nowadays (Again, from what I see) seem a lot less ‘formal’ than the office/crane/dock/etc (like the Walthers kit), and more of a siding for the freight cars and access an road/area for the trucks (possibly because the formal small town team track with it’s cranes and office and service area have been absorbed into much bigger trans-load centers, multi-tracked parallel spurs paved over with asphalt, and with service facilities and mobile freight handling equipment).
Of course, now people will posts dozens of currently active counter-examples[:P]
Team track and lcl yard? It was my understanding that team tracks were used for car-load shipments and that less-than-carload (lcl) shipments began and ended at freight houses. By definition, lcl loads were to multiple customers. Wouldn’t this require a degree of direct oversight by railroad personnel and physical protection to assure only the authorized customers picked up only their portions of the shipment? Items would be unloaded and stored in the freight house until the customers came to claim their property, and for outgoing shipments, the items would be left at the freight house for protection until loaded in the railroad box car.
For loading and unloading, it was usually more convenient to have the railroad car’s floor height at or near the height of the truck bed, and the truck placed immediately adjacent to the car door. A dock would be an obstruction in that case.