Loathar’s good fortune got me to wondering. How many of us have trains (1:1) at work.
At the factory where I work, we genreally ship out 1-2 60’ boxcars and get an equal number of replacements each day. We are serviced by UP. They use a GP38-3L (number 369) which I belive is located here more or less permanently for local switching. If the area grain elevators need switching, the UP brings in heavier power.
Just curious.
Tom
Not directly, but, I’ve been involved in excercises were the object is to study the effects of a terrorist attack upon rail assets using retired boxcars as the simulated target, blew them across two counties, does that qualify?
Dave
Currently I am staying at home to help raise my GF’s child (she makes all the money now) but in my younger years I was blessed to work at 3 different places that used rail service:
Was Federal Warehouse in East Peoria, we got box cars of food products, washing machines etc. I remember unloading a train car full of cigerettes.
Luria Brothers, cars came in but didn’t leave, well scrap did, we would take a torch and cut box cars, hoppers and cov hoppers for scrap. Before my time they did steam engines.
Midwest Solvents was a distillery, we got cov hoppers and tank cars, I loaded cov hoppers with feed, and at the gluten plant end we got airside hoppers of flour.
i do not work around trains i dispatch ambulances
but i do bring rolling stock kits in to work some times and buld them
We have a spur next to our facility which is often used to deliver chlorine to the water treatment plant next door to us. Occasionally when we receive a large power transformer, it is shipped in by rail. There is a Metrolink/UP (former SP) mainline along the road to the north of where I work. There is also the occasional 1:87 train (sometimes even a steam locomotive) that makes an appearance at work.
I DO! I DO! I DO![:D][:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]
As a teen-ager I worked a labor gang at a paint factory. The night turn used to pick-up our empty cars and leave full ones for us. In the morning, a couple of us kids would have take a car jack and spot the cars at the appropriate unloading site.
Check this out for an interesting idea for your layout - The factory was near a railroad overpass and so the spur to us actually serviced us on the second floor! There were basically three different unloading sites along the siding. One, the box car was placed at a roller door to a warehouse area for unloading materials shipped to us in 55 gal. drum such as linseed oil, solvents, etc. The second spot had a gravity conveyor that sloped to a hole in the wall. The chute inside spiraled from the second floor clear down to the basement! Here we unloaded 50 pound bags of paint pigments, zinc-oxide, etc. The third location was at the end of the spur where it went over a coal bin. The factory used coal-fired boilers. All this arranged in a relatively straight line along one large building. The resulting scenaro would make an interesting model as well as add switching interest since you would have to shuffle the box cars if you needed to get at the hopper at the end of the track. I plan to model such a scene on my layout.
Chuck
No trains at work for me 
Of course I work for a brokerage firm, so that explains it 
I work in Aspinwall, PA (just up the river from Pittsburgh) and the scrapyard where the Pennsy (and later PC) would send their retired engines, is just across the street. NS now runs quite a few trains less than a block away from my office. If I’m lucky, I can get outside and watch them pass through town 
I work in downtown Pittsburgh and there’s a light rail system (the “T”) that has a stop that’s more or less under our building if that counts.
Years ago I worked for a grocery wholesaler in York ¶ that had a rail siding into it’s warehouse. Every now and then they’d ship by rail. Never got to see them actually do any switching but would see a box car in the warehouse from time to time.
I had both 1-87 and 1-1. When I was working as an opr/towerman for the SP I would frequently bring model work to wage work for something to do in the wage work lulls.
So, THAT’S why it takes so long on those 911 calls!!! LMAO
When I was working my Union job class was Forklift Operator-Rail…That means my job was unloading box cars…The warehouse where I was working receives 1-4 boxcars a day…Since being medically retired after having a major heart attack I often wonder who’s doing that job now?
Where I work we generate our own power. Strings of coal cars sit next to the power plant, but I cannot see them from my building. Nor do I ever get to see them coming or going. The road does parallel the tracks for a mile, so I do get to catch an occasional through train during the drive in and home some days.
we have cryogenic tank cars here at the plant that haul liquid Argon to California…I like to visit with the train crews that come in and use our snack shack when they are on break…Chuck
I don’t ever see the trains, but I request bulk hopper trucks and have them sent to rail car terminals in order to deliver to various customers.
The one thing I am amazed at is how long it can take for a rail car to get from Chicago IL to Battle Creek MI. I am waiting on a rail car that should have arrived two weeks ago.[:(!]
It has forced me to ship a bulk truck directly from my plant in Tx in order to keep my customer from running out. I think that is why my customers will not take take rail cars directly anymore.[:(]
West Coast S, that must have been quite a show, watching railcars blow up.
Chuck, was the spur on a trestle into the building or a fill? That would make a very interesting scene to model.
Tom
I am a tugboat captain. I used to tow a rail car barge loaded with tank cars from Mobile ,Al. to Ponce Puerto Rico. We carried 28 tank cars at a time, loaded with coca-cola syrup to the bottler in Puerto Rico.
The barge was 480’ x 80’. The trip took 9 days one way. The tug was 115’ long with 3900 hp. It was always fun when a tank car derailed half way onto the barge!
Tom (fiatfan)
The spur was on a fill. Where to conveyor was, that section of the building was set back from the track for maybe 20 feet (guess) and had a roof over it attached to the main building. The conveyor was fixed with the receiving end close to the box car door. It then sloped to a square hole in the side of the building. Interesting area with guy wires supporting the center of the conveyor and lots of dust from when a bag would break. The base of the coal bin at the end of the track was at what would be street level for the front side of the building. The side away from the building was open. The fill at this point had sloped away to the base level of the building. The bin structure was an open steel frame so the interior could be detailed to show coal piles, etc. (or, in the summer months when some of us kids would tick-off the boss, we’d get sent to the coal bin with hammers to chip away rusty scale in preparation for painting of the steel work.) Some basic light steel trestlework should work fine for this portion. If you really decide to model this, I’d be more than happy to try and answer any detail questions you might have via e-mail. We could exchange sketches if need be. A model factory could be served by the railroad on the side or rear of the building. The layout could pretty flexible. If you need it, my e-mail addy is pcsassoc@ncweb.com .
In any case, keep us posted if you decide to model it.
Chuck
I have worked at a large grain terminal since 1970.We used to unload 40’ box cars with a bridge like machine which would rock them up and down.Now it’s covered hoppers and unit trains to load and unload. When I am lucky I am the engineer or brakeman on a 35 Ton GE built in 1958.
Chuck,
Thank you very much for the additional information. I will definitely keep this in mind. Right now, it looks like 6 months to a year before I get started on something like that but I already have a place in mind for it.
Again, thanks.
Tom