Hey everybody, a few months ago I built a structure for my new layout, here it is, http://www.atlasrr.com/Images/Track/Trackphotos/750.GIF I know it’ll ship out lumber of some sort, but what cars should I use?
Centerbeam flat cars, boxcars, and flatcars.
and bulkhead flats.
This is actually a lumber yard that would sell to the consumer, so lumber should be dropped off here, not shipped out. Lumber is shipped out of a lumber mill.
As has been said, this is an industry that receives lumber, not ships it. The types of cars it receives would vary by era. In the steam and transition areas, most lumber would arrive in boxcars. Bulkhead flats and centerbeams are more recent inventions.
Thanks everybody!!! So what you people are telling me, I should have pickups and semi’s to take out loads?
Pick-up trucks, yes, Semis, not really…
This builing appears to the a 1950s-1970s lumber RETAIL place… like the equivalent of the lumber part of a present day Home Depot.
Boxcars with various sizes of lumber would arrive and be unloaded into the building, then homeowners, carpenters, etc. would come buy it, and haul it home. Therefore pickups, would be ok, or even a car with lumber strapped to the roof.
Also, the building says “millwork” Millwork is usually kitchen cabinets, etc. So a home building company might pickup crated kitchen cabinets that arrived also by boxcar.
that’s my $.02
I agree. Maybe a 1 or 2 ton flatbed truck. Think of the Home Depot & Lowes lumber departments (this was the normal lumber yard before the Home Depot, Builder’s Square, Handy Dan, etc. type ran them out of business).
When I was growing up (1965-1975) there was a lumber yard in Kechi Kansas of this type (Sutherland Lumber as I recall). They had a couple of 2 ton flat bed trucks to make deliveries to the local builders with. It was on the Rock Island railroad. Most of the lumber arrived in double door box cars. Then around 1970 the first bulk head flat I ever saw was at this location. More and more lumber started arriving on flats. The lumber was “wrapped” and not just exposed to the weather.
One other thougth to add to what has already been said. When I was growing up, even a modest size town would host a pretty decent lumber yard (our county seat of about 10,000 had three in the 60s). The yards I’m familiar with would have a group of buildings such as these forming the sides of the “yard” where the trucks could load. Often there were other buildings such as the mill shop, warehouse for other building materials as well. A yard would receive more than lumber also – brick, bagged cement, doors, windows, etc, until trucking made inroads into these. My memories of going to the yard with my dad make one a key destination on my layout under construction.
up until the 70’s there were also hoppers that were unloaded at our local lumber yard for folks buying coal to heat their home here in michigan. Didn’t last into the 80’s though.
We had a store in Cleveland like that. (Forest City) It had rows of these open air buildings with wood and other building materials. The little shed was a guard house where a guy would check your vehicle and order when you left. It also had a large enclosed warehouse with indoor type items. They received their shipments via rail at the back of the yard from box and flat cars. Big gravel, fenced in lot next to the receiving track. It was kind of set up like the 84 Lumber stores are now.
There were at least two lumber yards in town when I grew up. One was right on a rail line and had its own spur. Back then a lot of lumber came in boxcars. Centerbeam flats did not seem to exist back in the 1960s, but ordinary flat cars or bulkhead flats would often deliver the lumber, too. I also do not recall lumber coming wrapped in plastic in the 1950s and 60s. That might have been a 1970s development but perhaps I was just not paying close enough attention.
That lumber yard was closed by the late 1960s. Its main focus was on selling to builders although it had a retail operation.
The other lumber yard was about two blocks from the nearest siding; it was more of a retail yard where you’d go to get the lumber for … your first train layout! Oh and the lumber yards would give away the sawdust that you’d dye green and use as “grass” on the layout.
A flat car with lumber would be delivered and then the lumber yard would send over its own flatbed truck (and its own fork lift would be driven over on city streets, more like gravel roads actually). In that sense the siding was almost more like a team track. Keep in mind that a lumber yard of the size you show would take a fairly long time between loads – this is not an every day switch-out in other words. Eventually that yard got its lumber by truck in the 1970s, and then it closed in the 1990s.
So a lumber yard can be rail served without the rail having to be right there at the lumber yard – an idea that might make for more efficient or realistic track planning.
Dave Nelson
Thank You all, I’m modeling modern era, so I’ll be using bulkhead flats, I can’t use centerbeams, my minimum radius is 18 inches, I think that’s how you say it. I have a question, my subscription has run out for model railroader, but I still have subscriber extras, even for the new issue, my last issue was the January 2009 one. Could someone tell me why I still have Subscriber extras!!!
Personaly i have ran centerbeams on a 18 inch radius before. Its better if they run them on larger radius curves but i think they might work on your layout. Thou on the curves they will hang over a good amount. i do not know aboutyour subscriber extra question, but i say use it until it is gone.
The same thing happened to me. I think that since your last issue is January 2009, you will have the extras until the end of January unless you renew.
Oddly enough, there are still a couple lumberyards in Lorain County still using similar sheds, even if they aren’t recieving deliveries by rail anymore. There are probably a number of small building kits around that could be used to turn this shed from a lumber yard into a mill.
In the small towm I live in (population of 865) had an lumber yard (now a stockmens supply store) with tracks on the back of the lumber storage shead. The front looks like the Atlas kit. The back has doors that are unlocked and opened to unload the lumber out of box cars. Depending on the era your modeling this could work. The lumber yard was fenced and gated. The tracks are long gone but the roadbed is still visable.