What the heck is this? (with map)

Trains Magazine General Discussion
1

Today i was out rail fanning, and drove by this facility

http://www.google.com/maphp?hl=en&q=Logansport+IN&ll=40.745306,-86.345984&spn=0.002211,0.008304&t=h&om=0

What the heck is it?

To me it looks like a former RR shop facility that has been converted to an industrial use, but that is just a guess.

If you look to the right of the turntable looking thing, you have a large building that looks like a factory.

Then, to the right of that, all along 18th street you see short stubs of track, laying perpendicular to the street, with (currently) covered hoppers sitting on each track.

Here is the part that has me confused, each section of track is not connected to rail leads, instead there appears to be a sliding 'bridge" that slides sideways parallel to the building (you can kinda see it up at the top of the lot, it’s yellow in color) so that it can align with each short segement of track.

Never seen one of these before. What izzit?

2

The “sliding bridge” is called a transfer table. Was reasonably common in railroad shops. It is very effecient use of space as compared to lead tracks required to accompli***he same task.

Mac

3

Here is a better example of a transfer table situation, though the pit has been mostly filled in since the buildings have been converted to office/retail and motel use.

http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=st+paul+Minnesota&ll=44.971463,-93.15387&spn=0.002444,0.008326&t=h&om=0

The two large rectangular buildings were once part of the NP’s Como Shops, a passenger car facility. The transfer table went right between them, allowing cars to be moved to any bay in either building very efficiently. There were also ladder tracks coming away from both the east and west sides of this pair of structures. A very busy place in it’s day.

The facility you saw seems very strange indeed. The turntable on the west side of the big building is very weird. It looks like there is an extension shed on one of the leads. The image in your link shows a lot of rather long cars in a yard west of the structures. Were they there when you visited? It almost looks like a passenger car graveyard.

I wonder if the big building and the transfer table once extended further toward the river.

4

Bandana Square! I’ll have to remember that next time I walk through there, and look for other evidence.

5

Thanks, so this was probably part of the Pennsey “shops” at one time? Makes sense.

Everything was fenced and weeded in pretty good, prohibiting the kind of "up close"examination that I woulde like to have made, what typically powers a transfer table’s movement, and how much carrying capacity do they (usually) have?

It seemed noteworthy at the time (yesterday) that the storage tracks were full of covered hoppers, made me wonder if perhaps the contents of the cars might be related to a business inside the factory.
Then, getting home to TerraServer and seeing the turntable behind the building, made me wonder if perhaps “car repair” might be the ongoing business.

Would these transfer tables (typically) have enough capacity to move a Dash-9 or an SD-70?

6

Here is a link to Transco Railway Products, Inc. which gives some insight to what is going on behind the fence.

http://www.transcorailway.com/History.htm

Jay

7

It looks like a good place to around and take pics!

8

Big_Boy_4005, Thanks for the additional info.

As far as the questions you ask, well Logansport has always been one of those towns that I wanted to take the time and rail fan, but always was too busy otherwise to stop and pay attention. It was always just a way station between points “A” and “B” where I just couldn’t stop

Yesterday’s trip was intended to solve that glaring deficiency, I had to go to Lafayette and decided to spend half a day collecting answers to all those pestering questions I’ve accumulated over the years.

Unfortunately, I managed to walk away with more questions than when I arrived. [#oops]

Logansport is intriguing in that they haven’t done a lot of urban renewal, being a small town I guess funds are limited, so when thngs get abandoned, they tend to just sit, and rot. Or more accurately, sit, get partially encroached uponj by a neighboring operation, and what gets left behind is what ever didn’t end up being in someone’s way when the encroachment began.

I spent a great deal of time scractching my head wondering what a variety of things “once were” or once were a part of, it was like trying to build a like sized jigsaw puzzle.

As far as the building extending farther to the river at one time, I haven’t a clue, It may have. Access to see the site from ground level is very limited, eyeballing from Woodlawn Avenue and 18th street was about as close as you could get without slip sliding down a muddy river bank.

As far as the 'long cars" you mention, well there were no passenger cars visible yesterday, but what I did see a lot of in that yard area were articulated container sets, and I notice by looking in the ariel photo, many of them are situated in groups of 5.

So perhaps??? That’s what they are?

What is amazing about Logansport is that for such a little town, there was so much rail activity there at one time (Wabash, PRR Panhandle, PRR Vandalia, TPW, and now so m

9

A transfer table gets it’s support from (usually 4) rails down in the pit, depending on the span. It is very much like a turntable, but instead of going around in circles it moves from side to side. I can’t imagine weight being the limiting factor, with virtually unlimited support available. If they fit on lengthwise they should be okay.

Yeah Brian. Every year that passes, there is less evidence of what was once there. I have some photos from the mid 70’s, but they are on slides. I need to get them transfered to digital so I could post them for topics like this.

10

[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by TheAntiGates

Big_Boy_4005, Thanks for the additional info.

As far as the questions you ask, well Logansport has always been one of those towns that I wanted to take the time and rail fan, but always was too busy otherwise to stop and pay attention. It was always just a way station between points “A” and “B” where I just couldn’t stop

Yesterday’s trip was intended to solve that glaring deficiency, I had to go to Lafayette and decided to spend half a day collecting answers to all those pestering questions I’ve accumulated over the years.

Unfortunately, I managed to walk away with more questions than when I arrived. [#oops]

Logansport is intriguing in that they haven’t done a lot of urban renewal, being a small town I guess funds are limited, so when thngs get abandoned, they tend to just sit, and rot. Or more accurately, sit, get partially encroached uponj by a neighboring operation, and what gets left behind is what ever didn’t end up being in someone’s way when the encroachment began.

I spent a great deal of time scractching my head wondering what a variety of things “once were” or once were a part of, it was like trying to build a like sized jigsaw puzzle.

As far as the building extending farther to the river at one time, I haven’t a clue, It may have. Access to see the site from ground level is very limited, eyeballing from Woodlawn Avenue and 18th street was about as close as you could get without slip sliding down a muddy river bank.

As far as the 'long cars" you mention, well there were no passenger cars visible yesterday, but what I did see a lot of in that yard area were articulated container sets, and I notice by looking in the ariel photo, many of them are situated in groups of 5.

So perhaps??? That’s what they are?

What is amazing about Logansport is that for such a little town, there was so much rail activity there a

11

What you found in Logansport can be found in dozens of Midwestern towns, places that spung up when rails met, and – for all practical purposes – were locked in time when the railroads left.

Near here we have Mendota, LaSalle-Peru (was a port on Illinois River first), Sycamore, Ottawa, Ladd and many others. A lot of the rail traffic ceased either when the coal ran out, or it became too sulphurous when the laws changed.

12

Well man, you hit the ball out of the park on that one, nice work (thanks) [:)]

13

Personally, I am not an avid modeler, but the unique layout of the transfer table made me wonder the same thing, as far as why I’ve never seen any one else try to model one as part of their layout.

14

Thanks for the tip.

15

The FEC used this type of transfer table at its heavy steam repair facility and routinely moved its heavy moutain style engines sans tenders. One advantage is you were not limited to the number of stalls you could put around a circle. The building could be very long with lots of stalls.[2c] As always ENJOY

16

Transfer tables were not only more space-efficient than TTs, but they were cheaper to assemble using straight rails, wheels and trucks. I’ve been to the one at Bandana Square to visit the former GTW 0-8-0 that’s there on display. It came from Northwestern Steel & Wire in Sterling, Ill. via the Illinois Rail Museum.

17

Gates,
It is not a transfer table, but a overhead gantry crane.
In the link, you can see the shadow of the crane.
They use it to “park” cars in the stub tracks.
The cars are either there as parts cars, or themselves are awaiting parts to be repaired.
Most backshops had such cranes to lift locomotives off the trucks for wheel changes or traction motor replacement.

The one at the Hardy street shop here in Houston was large enough to lift the biggest steam locomotive on the SP system, the AC cab forwards, although I dont think one of those ever made it down here.

When they razed the old SP shops last year, UP had to run a special train with extra flats just to move the parts of the crane out of there…after they tore down the building.
It was to big to remove first, before they demo’ed the shop.
According to one of our guys who used to work there, they built the crane first, then the building around it.

Ed

18

You’re welcome, but thanks for bringing up the subject. Very interesting stuff.

19

That’s entirely possible Ed, not knowing exactly what I was looking at, it was impossible to look for specific details… but I don’t recall seeing anything taller than the cars themselves in that area, and what I did manage to see (and remember" looked about 4’ high with hand rails running down either side.

Hard to say for sure. But if I go back for another look, at least now i’ll have a better idea what to look for.

20

Back in 1979 a buddy and I went to Logansport and then Peru for a day of fanning. He was (and is) a huge Pennsy fan, so this trip made sense to him. I remember there was not much left there as far as trains concerned but there were some really neat old buildings with PRR logo and PENNSYLVANIA RAILROAD.

I dont remember too much about the place except there were a lot of weeds and any track was hidden. I have a few shots somewhere, which I will dig out. I was more interested in trains than old buildings at the time and wasnt too interested in staying around. So, off to Peru we went for C&O action (non-action).

What a place Logansport must have been back in the day!

My 1953 Official Guide shows PRR lines radiating out of Logansport in six directions with a split in one line just outside of town to make it seven.

At the 10:00 direction was the Chicago line
12:00 was a line to Plymouth and ultimately South Bend
1:00 was a line thru Columbia City and Butler
4:00 was a line that went to Anoka which then split into a line to Columbus Oh and a line to Cincinnati
6:00 was the line to Indy and then on to Louisville.
9:00 was the line to Effner, Il, which connected with the TPW.

Further, I counted 17 passenger trains a day at Logansport. Particularly interesting would have been between 11:28 am and 12:15pm when in that 47 minutes there were 5 passenger trains.

The Wabash added 4 passenger trains a day, including the Wabash Cannonball at 11:00am and one could make the case that Logansport was a “hotspot”.

My guess is that there had to have been at least 30 PRR freight trains and 15 to 20 Wabash, so that towerman at the crossing was busy.

No doubt there are retired railroaders who talk about such days and recall when Logansport was a railroad town. I am sure their eyes have a far away look at those times.

ed