I may have missed something on this topic but I just have to ask … what is a team track and what is it to be used for? Every now and then I think I understand the term but then read something that resets my thinking.
PS: When creating these posts, what are TAGS about?
I believe the name came from when teams of horses brought wagons up next to the rail cars to load or unload. Now a truck can back up next to the tracks and unload. They are generally for less than carload lots and small customers. Also for customers not close to the railroad, not having enough traffic to justify their own spur. Some have an unloading ramp so that things like tractors could be unloaded or items taken off the car could be placed there waiting for a ride to the final destination. Others had unloading cranes to lift things out of gondolas or off flat cars. A small coal dealer might back a conveyor under hopper car doors and fill trucks. Generally they are used for just about anything going where the tracks don’t.
Hope this helps.
Have fun,
Richard
A team track is also known as a public delivery track. It is a railroad owned track at which companies who are not rail served can load or unload rail shipments.
So if you own a lumber yard one mile from the railroad, you can have a car load of lumber shipped to you at the team track. You will be notified that the car has arrived and it will be up to you to provide a mens to unload the car and remove the contents from the team track.
For tags, they are basically search keywords you use. Nobody ever uses them, but if you want something to be searched (you have a famous layout, an obscure technique, etc.), tag the keywords you think people would search. (Hint, include things like “How to care for pet rats” or “Jobs in Baltimore MD.” to make them extra-searchable lol [:D] )
As for team tracks, the term originated before automobiles where teams of horses pulled up to a special track set aside for when a) a business required so few deliveries that it didn’t warrant the business it’s own spur, or b) the business was in an obscure enough location that the railroad 1) couldn’t access it or 2) was too far away to build to. Basically, you would have one single spur likely connected to a ramp or loading dock just off the railroad. It should be easily accessible to vehicles, and would have two or three regular customers, with an occasional other. The idea is that you would work it like an industry siding, but deliveries must come at different times in order to not clog up the spur (unless there is space, of course, but they usually hold but one car at a time).
Team tracks, however, must not be confused with freight houses, which were sidings with freight warehouses connecting to them. They were basically the reception centers for the Railroad equivalent of a UPS service. The cars that came all had “LCL” traffic, or Less than Car Load. These were still businesses ordering (it was rare that you would find domestic grandma’s sending birthday gifts), but instead of ordering a whole car (team tracks), they bought a portion of a car (freight houses).
Hope this helps!
Team tracks are good industries to consider for a model railroad layout because:
My favorite minimalist team track is this one on near the end of the line for the Detroit Connecting Railroad (Bing view here). Mechanical reefers are spotted right on the main and trucks unload them. There isn’t even a driveway, the trucks just hop the curb - you can see the ruts right by the reefer.
Thanx for all that information - really helps and wasn’t what I had thought (although my better half thought it may have been to do with teams of horses). Well historically speaking I guess she was right on. But now I have the whole story.
Thanx again
Just remember that the team track isn’t an industry per se. It is just a single track used by multiple industries.
Dave,Back in the day a team track could serve one customer like a lumber company in a small town or small city.These lumber companies could recieve 4-5 cars a month and the track was usually weed grown…
and now you also know why truck drivers belonged to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Chauffers Warehousemen and Helpers of America.
(Mr Hoffa can’t come to the phone right now, he is covered up.)
grizlump
It isn’t necessarily so that a team track is used by multiple industries. The key thing is that it is not dedicated to, or necessarily on the site of, the industry that uses it. that is the cars are not unloaded onto a dock into a building. There may or may not be an unloading ramp, and there may or may not be a cover or roof over that ramp.
Back in the 1960s to the 1980s, a siding I knew well as a kid had two tanneries directly on the siding, as well as a fuel oil facility and a plastic bag plant. All got cars from time to time. But a local lumber yard also got its lumber shipped to that siding and then trucked it back to their yard a few blocks away. To my knowledge no other industry used that spur as a team track – I suppose in theory they could have, but they didn’t. The lumber cars were typically parked at the exact same spot that had ready access from the road, which at that time was gravel. Heh heh – folks still remember the first time that lumber yard got wood shipped on a center beam flat and their crew didn’t bother to read the unloading instructions (the ones printed on the end bulkheads, showing the car tipping over). You guessed it …
At Butler Yard here in Milwaukee, one track in the yard, near the lead to the diesel shop, is often used as a team track. it often unloads sheet rock panels that are picked up by a nearby local distributor using a special kind of fork lift and flatbed truck that they just drive over. I have seen that same track be used to unload very oversized loads using cranes and enormous flatbed trucks. I imagine the railroad is not keen on having huge cranes and trucks driving around its tracks but it probably is a lot easier than trying to move those huge loads onto weed infested sidings down the line where they might not even know they have the needed clearances.
So that
This example is from way back when, in the 1920’s / early 1930’s
Automobiles were unloaded from box cars in a lot adjoining the freight station.
The car dealers would jack up the rear ends ot the cars and let them run awhile to smooth off the burs from the transmission and differential gears and then drive them away. So I was told.
Happy Railroading
Bob
Everybody seems to be getting hung up on the “multiple industries” comment.
The point is that a team track belongs to the railroad and does not belong to any industry. Any industry can use it, be it one industry or a thousand industries. So while only one industry may use it at any given point in time, that doesn’t mean that other industries may not have used it in the past or that 10 minutes into future another industry could start using it.
The vast majority of railroad industry listings from the 1950’s or earlier I have seen have shown multiple users for most team tracks. That is not to say they get a shipment every day. They might get one shipment a year, but that would be multiple users for the same track.
In modern times, the team track might be leased to one industry, but then its not a team track any more.
FWIW, I used the term “industry” above as shorthand for “a place where cars are set out and picked up”, and not a specific type of industry. Sorry for the confusion.
I have several team tracks on my layout, they are located in a remote spot where I can set one or two cars there for either loads or unloads. I also have several freight houses too for the LCL to use also. One of my team tracks is used for a business that ships about a half a carload of goods about every two months to a customer. Find a nice spot that can hold 1-2 cars on a spur and you have an instant team track, just add truck and loading ramp if you want and you are set.
It wasn’t (isn’t?) too unusual for a single track to serve one or more industries’ docks on one side of the track and serve as a team track on the other. All this takes is a track with industries on one side and a wide paved (or unpaved) area on the other with street access. I suspect the track is owned by the railroad in this case and its use is determined by the local agent. It’s his job to keep customers happy with the railroad and the timing of cars being available for loading and unloading…