Combination Depot Question

[steveuk]

Hello. I would like to get information on how freight was transferred from freight car to dock on combination depots. All the pictures I have seen show the dock being several feet from the track. I am sure there was good reason for this, but I wondered how heavy freight (machinery from a box car, vehicles from flats) etc was managed. I know in a lot of cases that baggage was moved on baggage carts and wheeled up a ramp but I can't see how this works for anything really heavy. I am particularly interested in Santa Fe practice, but I guess it's the same for all railroads

 

Thank You

 

Steve

[daveklepper]

What I recall seeing were forklift trucks.  Possibly there were other methods as well.

[Deggesty]

What I saw in my home town was two long timbers, about twelve inches wide and six-eight inches thick, with sheet-iron covered beveled ends. The timbers were kept in pockets below the freight room door, and were pulled all the way out and then one end of each was placed on the freight car floor and the other end was placed on the floor of the freight room. Then, handtrucks were used to move the freight in or out. The recipient or shipper moved his vehicle (truck or wagon to the freight room door for loading or unloading. My only personal experience with freight was helping unload sacks, half-sacks, and quarter-sacks of flour from a boxcar and moving them directly to the wagon belonging to the store where I was working.

I never saw any heavy machinery being moved.

[wjstix]

Generally a combination station wasn't really designed to handle big freight items like heavy machinery. More things that could be loaded and unloaded by hand - remember back in the day parcels all went by rail, not in UPS trucks, and everything went by rail from postcards to deceased folks.

If a smallish town with a combo depot occassionally got a shipment of something like heavy machinery, there would probably be a team track in the town with an unloading ramp and/or some sort of a crane or block and tackle set up to unload it.