I was looking at the Walther’s kit for creating a “Team Track” scene and noticed that there is an overhead crane and platform and an end-of-track ramp, in addition to an office, etc. I couldn’t find any of these kits because they’ve been discontinued so I’ve been trying to recreate the kit myself. I built a Durango Press wooden overhead crane which is real neat. It has 2 “bays”; one for a railroad car and another for a unloading platform. I already had a wooden platform to place under one side of the crane. I’ve built a Pike-Stuff concrete ramp and have a couple of questions.
First, in the prototype, would they have used a concrete ramp to get up to a wooden platform or should I replace the wooden platform with a concrete one that Pike-Stuff makes to match the ramp?
Second, in the Walther’s team track kit, it shows an “end-of-track” ramp that goes at the end of the team track spur. It appears indented in the middle of the high end, I guess to allow the flat car or gondola to get up close to the ramp with the coupler fitting into the indentation in the ramp. My question hear is, how would unloading occur from the end of the car. Are we talking about a fork-lift going up the ramp and working the end of the car? Obviously, considering the placement of the overhead crane per the Walther’s catalogue photo, it doesn’t appear to come into play for end-of-car unloading.
I know I’m being particular, but I’d like to hear from some of you retired railroad guys.
The only team track knowledge I know of is a place where they would take the items off a railcar and onto a truck.
Years ago I watched a truck flatbed get loaded in town with a forklift taking wood of a opera-house beam lumber car, after several trips the railcar was empty and ready to go.
Cranes were used to take steel and alumium coil off barges in the midwest onto either truck or rail. Alot of docks I went to were equipped with tracks and accepted railcars.
A team track literally means from a wagon with team of horses to load onto or from a railcar. If they had people in a work gang doing manual labor, cranes or other ways to move the cargo that is what was on hand.
I would say that any way you can build a teamtrack facility that fits your desires and needs for your railroad will look good as part of that railroad. According to your post, you seem to be well along the path towards a complete teamtrack scene.
Based on the team tracks/freight yard/public track arrangements around here (PRR & P&LE RR), I’d say this:
Concrete platforms would have concrete ramps. Wood platforms would have wood ramps. The ramps should have about a 1:4 (rise over run) slope.
End of track ramps were used for “circus loading”, that is for cargos that could be driven or pulled on/off the cars. Examples would be construction equipment, tractors, and farm implements.
Cranes were used to lift cargo into/out of cars and onto vehicles placed parallel to the tracks. There was a steel one in place at the end of a freight platform nearby sometime between 1913 and 1921.
When a car is placed against an end dock to be unloaded its brakes are screwed on hard to stop it shifting as the weight distribution changes as the load is removed. It is possible for the end dock to have a hole in it for the buckeye to fit into but not essential. What is needed is a plate or plates to bridge the gap between the dock and the end of the car. This is usually steal but can be timber. Some are fixed to hinges and flap up/down others are loose and shifted into/out of place.
An end dock may lead direct to a slope/ramp or not.
A side dock may only come as close as is safe to car sides. This is why most docks are straight.
Once the car is alongside the dock and the doors are open loads can be hand balled out into stacks or onto barrows of various kinds. This is about the slowest method. Next best is to put roller racks or any other means of sliding boxes and such out of the car either to stacks or to where you want it to go.
If you can avoid it you do not cross dock from car to semi trailer or truck. If the truck is available you cross load straight into the truck parked at right angles to the car. This affects the space you need for trucks in a team track… 40’+ (depending on date) plus manouvering space for the tractor (unless you confine yourself to 28’ trailers and/ or small vans… Don’t if you don’t want to upset your small workers)!
Next alternative is to drop plates from the dock into the car doors and take the barrows right into the cars. These are not usually fixed as`fixing requires accurate rail car positioning and an odd length car can throw the whole thing out.
Then you use thicker plates to take the weight of fork lift trucks and they go in and remove a palletised load. Where the load is palletised you might cross-dock to trailers either backed against the dock at 90degrees to the dock 45degrees or at the end parrallel to the track… the FLTs are doing the carrying they j
Team track facilities could, and did, vary widely from site to site. It could be elaborate, as done in the Walther’s kit you are recreating, or it could be ultra-primitive, just a length of siding surrounded by an unpaved, but flat area. Really, all that you need is that flat area, so a horse and wagon originally ( the “team” in team track ) and later trucks, could come up alongside a railroad car for loading or unloading.
So, you can vary your setup quite a bit.
Team tracks that were very busy, or owned by prosperous railroads might have elaborate facilities. Those at sites that didn’t tranship a lot of lading, or that belonged to poor railroads, would have the bare minimum.
Very comprehensive answer, Dave. I’ve put team tracks in several towns around my layout. This one has an overhead crane (a modified Kibri model) and a scratchbuilt wooden platform and ramp.
The ramps are heavy enough for unloading automobiles or farm machinery, although I’ve not yet modelled an end-of-car unloading ramp for all my end-door boxcars.
I like the pics [^] Whose [who’s??? [%-)]] buildings are they… especially the long factories in the background? You have achieved a nice result with persepective… I suspect that their length helps.
Who’s crane is that?
You make a good point about the ramps being built heavily enough for the traffic they support.
You haven’t noted that you have a conveyor by the crane… because it has no bottom collection pan? [}:)]
You even have some weeds round the bottom edges of some of the buildings [^]
A couple of other things I didn’t mention above.
Team tracks would usually not be very secure. This would mean that traffic didn’t stand around long except way out in the country where everyone would know who had what… so if a pile of goods vanished from the team track and a pile suddenly appeared somewhere else…
Nevertheless… if a load had to be got out of a car and there was any chance of rain spoiling it it would be kept up off the ground and sheeted.
Also measures would usually be kept up to discourage vermin… everything from mice to foxes. Any spills - especially grain - would be swept up -grain especially is worth money - it can also rot or germinate if it isn’t eaten. Modern facilities tend to have rat bait boxes placed down against wall bases where the operator reckons rats will run. Then again modern facilities also tend to have automatic flood lights to show up two-legged rats breaking in. If the facility was really busy it might have a security shed/gatehouse these days.
Thanks for the kind words, Dave. The crane is from Kibri: I have another one that will be installed in another town. They are similar to one that was used at a team track not far from where I lived as a child. The buildngs that you refer to are from various sources. In the first photo, the large buff-coloured building, a station/express building/post office, is scratchbuilt, with modified windows from the Walthers waterfront warehouse. The building to the right of that is the Walthers warehouse, actually most of the walls from two kits, spread out to make a longer structure. The two unseen walls are blank styrene. The green structure to the right of that is a scratchbuilt coal dealer’s operation: Central Valley bridge girders, lots of Evergreen strip, and covered in Campbell’s metal siding. In the second photo, you can see the entire station structure, and in front of it, the Bertram Machine Tool Works. The left end is the Walthers Vulcan Foundry, built with a blank rear wall, and all of the long walls facing the tracks. The structure with the smokestack and the truck loading docks is a combination of scratchbuilt, walls and doors from an MDC/Roundhouse 3-in-1 kit, and modified roof panels from a Vollmer roundhouse. The office complex at the right end is a modified LifeLike bottling plant. The conveyors beside the team track are by Walthers, and while a bit “heavy” looking, were at least cheap enough to allow me to park them all over the layout, adding a little bit of operational interest. Having only seen these from a distance, as a child, I wasn’t really aware that there should be more to them. It was my assumption that the low conveyor, seen near the ramp in the second photo, was used with the long end under the hopper of a car, and the other end dumping onto the bottom of the elevator conveyor, which would then lift the material into a waiting truck. The shack in the foreground of the second picture is for
I was trying to figure out what that thing was… yes it could work as you say… would it fit under the hoppers?
Two solutions if it won’t… fit a pan to the bottom of the lifting converyor to funnel the hopper loads down to the base of the conveyor belt… or… create a pit for the second part of the machine to be lowered into so that the collecting end is under the track as well as the car. This pit would be covered with timbers when not in use.
The pit would be at 90o to the track but the top machine can be at any angle that it can receive it… this angle can be varied more if you again give the top machine a receiving bin.
Dave, the “blurb” that came with the Walthers conveyor kits mentioned the use of the lower-style conveyor, and that long section can be positioned under a car’s hopper, although opening the hopper door would probably bury it.[:D] All of my modelled coal yards have direct rail access and most will also deal in sand and aggregates, too, so perhaps the conveyors here are not much more than little-used scenery.
The latticed columns are from Central Valley, and the rest of the structure is built from Evergreen styrene strips and structural shapes. The removeable roof has a complete truss system, and is sheathed with Campbell corrugated siding, as are the visible walls. The sheds, scalehouse and scale, and the fences are all scratchbuilt. A few of those conveyors are here, for use when the upper delivery track is out of service.
This is the main office on Liberty St. The front is Walthers styrene brick sheet, and the rest of the structure is .060" sheet styrene. There’s also a garage/stable located behind this building, with access under the delivery trestle.
Okay! Now I’ve gone green. Wish I was anywhere near as advanced with my models… excuse is having moved house too often recently.
Has your coal vendor got scales of some sort? Or a weigh house for bulk? (Got to fight back somehow).
And the bridge is wrong… no sign of pigeons roosting [;)] A location like that you just have to have pigeons (flying rats).
Being REALLY piccy… but just an idea… your buildings will sit down and blend in even more (I like the weeds) if you run just a minute fillet of slightly darker material (try a thick paint like water based oils) all along the angle between the building and the ground. You could do this between the curb and the road as well. Almost every day we wander around not noticing this deposit of polution. The odd speck of green indicates that it has been there long enough for small weeds to germinate. It’s a minute detail but it does help make scenes “solid”.
Dave, if you look at the last photo, there’s a scale table, for weighing trucks and wagons, between those yellow posts and the small scalehouse to the right. As for the buildings sitting either on or in the scenery, I take it that you’re referring to the second-to-last picture, with the office and the end of the dump sheds. Believe it or not, there is a foundation below the corrugated siding and behind the weeds, although I have to admit that it could be mistaken for one of those “floating” buildings.[:)] And I do agree with your remarks about the flying rats, although Dunnville (the modelled city where this scene is located) has as its motto: “Help keep Dunnville clean; eat a pigeon for lunch”[:D] Also, I don’t mind the suggestions at all: the one about weeds in the gutters is a good one, and when I get around to gluing down that styrene road, I’ll implement your idea. I appr
Mondo, first, I’m not a retired railroad man, but a “team track” is nothing more than a siding where cars are left for loading or unloading, where a business or indivedual doesn’t have enough traffic to warrent a siding to their facility. It could be located at a depot in a town or even out in the rural country side. The amount or extent of the facilities on this siding would depend on what is normally loaded or unloaded there. A ramp, concrete or wood, could be placed at the end of the track so a flat car could be placed there to unload or load equipement such as a bulldozer, construction vehicles and such. A crane may be incorperated to transfer heavy crates or machinery and such from or to flat or gondola cars. I guess what I’m saying is first determine the revenue the team track will be used for and go from there as far the amount of detail to put with it. I once lived where a team track was nothing more then a sideing out in the country behind our farm and the Erie RR would spot a couple of gondolas there and they would haul horse manure from Buffalo Raceway out there in dump trucks and load it into the gons with a frontend loader to be shipped to mushroom farms in Pa. The siding was also used to drop of an occasional "hotbox to burnout. Hope this helps. Ken