To a certain extent it depends on your era and the size of the power plant. I worked at the City of Dover (De.) power plant and the City of Vineland (NJ) power stations. Both of these were small plants, operated (at least originally) by the namesake cities. While not exactly in the center of town, they were close enough to be considered within the city limits. I know that when the Dover plant blew the soot out of their boilers, it generally upset the neighbors who had their laundry hung out to dry next door.
On the other hand, modern coal burning power plants tended to be a little more remotely located. They require large properties both for the physical plant, as well as for the coal pile and the ash handling facility. Other things affecting the location of the plant are access to a railroad if the coal is brought in that way, or access to a waterway if the coal is barged in. Generally there is a river or other large waterway adjacent to the facility because water is needed for the plant's turbine condenser and other cooling, but it is also common to get the water piped from some distance away.
When you do build your power plant, please do not use that large door in the side of the building for coal cars like I've seen in the photos of some models. Even though there is a railroad track going into that door, its real purpose is/was for large equipment to be brought into or taken out of the plant. Typically that area in the building was called the crane bay. The turbine hall crane was used to lift equipment on/off either railroad cars or trucks parked in that bay.
Teamanglerx wrote:I orginally planned to put it near one of the ends but was wondering in really life how close are power plants to towns, cities, etc? Are there power plants placed within towns?
I orginally planned to put it near one of the ends but was wondering in really life how close are power plants to towns, cities, etc? Are there power plants placed within towns?
[1] The larger (with very high smokestack) coal-fired powerplants in Western Pennsylvania can be next to rural population areas, but are still isolated from those same population areas.
[2] The only time I can recall in-town powerplants was to provide electric juice for the local traction compny PCC passenger units, and; were in a smaller, not extremely large, building that could later be converted to a machine shop after the traction company went out of business. Smaller power substations were also found either in the city or at a more rural location.
The latter example is planned for the N Scale Conemaugh Road & Traction with a powerplant within the community of Conemaugh at least near or adjacent to the car barns. There may also be 1-2 power substations which could be placed in one of those spare layout corner(s).
John Armstrong also wrote about a concept called "loaded coal hoppers in" at one end of the building and "empty coal hoppers out" at the other end of the building. This is actually two trains with identical engines for the visual effect, and would require careful planning, and a layout end would probably not work as a powerplant location.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
maxman wrote: When you do build your power plant, please do not use that large door in the side of the building for coal cars like I've seen in the photos of some models. Even though there is a railroad track going into that door, its real purpose is/was for large equipment to be brought into or taken out of the plant. Typically that area in the building was called the crane bay. The turbine hall crane was used to lift equipment on/off either railroad cars or trucks parked in that bay.
I always thought the same thing about the large doors. However, I saw a show on one of the learning channels (TLC, History Channel or Discovery) where the guy was on the Alaska RR during the entire hour episode. On one segment, they pushed coal cars into an unloading facility at some university power plant through a big rollup door. They then had to open the doors and manually rake the coal out of the hoppers with shovels into grates in the floor alongside the hoppers. I am convinced there is at least one prototype example for even the most zany situation!
All of the Georgia Power plants here in GA are in mostly rural parts of the state, and always adjacent to a major waterway. The two closest to Atlanta are two of the three largest coal fired plants in the USA. I was going to model one of them, but the space required was so large that I decided to represent it with a staging track running through a hole in the wall.*
Regarding smaller power plants, I can think of the one at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA. This samll facility is located on campus very near Stanford Stadium where the Dawgs play. It has a spur running to the coal pile that looks like it has not been used for decades, although I have been told they still receive 3-4 hoppers of coal on a regular basis.
Here are some links to aerial views of the plants I have mentioned:
Georgia Power Plant Scherer, near Macon, GA (largest coal fired plant in the USA)http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=33.06006&lon=-83.802147&z=15.3&r=0&src=yh
Georgia Power Plant Bowen, near Cartersville, GA (3rd largest coal fired plant in the USA)http://www.flashearth.com/?lat=34.128292&lon=-84.921982&z=15.2&r=0&src=yh
University of Georgia Power Plant, Athens, GAhttp://www.flashearth.com/?lat=33.945911&lon=-83.373291&z=18.7&r=0&src=msa
Jamie
*I may model the power plant branch in the adjacent family room on the other side of "the hole"--don't tell my wife and if you do, I'll deny all knowledge
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Courage8 wrote:I live near Baltimore, which has at least two large power plants downtown (on the waterfront, of course - hard to make steam without water!) Regarding where to place your powerplant, however: you might take a lesson from a common arrangement in large, often remote western power generating stations. The coal arrives in trains on a "balloon track," which in model railroad terms would be a tight reverse loop. This could be modeled in an 18-inch diameter in N scale, so if you have a space that wide at one end, you COULD put the power plant at the end of the line, and coal trains could be pulled through the unloader, then loop around on the reverse loop and come out the way they came in. The only hitch is, the loop must be big enough to hold the entire train, or it will run into itself coming out. As an easy alternative, you could make the balloon track actually be the end of a dogbone, so you could use seperate tracks coming into and out of the area of the power plant.
Yes, there are a number of power stations in the area of Baltimore. You've got Brandon Shores and Wagner sort of to the east, and Crane Station to the north. I worked at all three of those locations. There was another plant I believe just south of the McHenry tunnel. Worked there also. I forget the name of it, but it was an old place and I think they shut it down a couple years ago. The other place I think you are talking about is around I395(?). I think this is actually what they used to call a trash to cash facility. I believe that they burn refuse there.
The water from the river/bay is really used for cooling of the turbine-generators, the turbine exhaust steam in the condenser, and balance of plant coolers. A lot of the newer plants use what is called a closed cooling water system to do the same thing. When raw river/bay water is used for cooling, there is a lot of gunk that can accumulate in the condenser tubes causing them to clog. The closed cooling water systems use recirculated water, so it is much cleaner. When you see a cooling tower, the plant has a closed cooling water system. And cooling towers are used at fossil plants as well as at nuclear power plants. A cooling tower is basically an air to water heat exchanger. On the other hand, the water used to make steam is even a better quality water that gets treated to remove "bad stuff". Not being a boiler guy, I can't define bad stuff other than to say that they used to spend a lot of time "cleaning up" the water before they could fire the boiler.
Oh, and the stuff you see coming out the top of the cooling tower is water vapor, not steam. Important to note when you are having a discussion with a paranoid nuclear power plant neighbor. Say, that's an idea for a power plant within the city limits. Philadelphia Electric (now Exelon) has one located northwest of Philadelphia in a populated area. They just built one of those high-class outlet malls within spitting distance of the plant cooling towers.
In re: the Alaska Railroad indoor coal unloading facility, I believe that I saw that too. I think the show may actually have been on the History Channel. When I made the "coal cars don't go in those doors" comment, I was referring to the doors that are similar to the large door in the Walther's power plant kit. That door is definitely supposed to represent a crane bay door.
http://cs.trains.com/forums/1461093/ShowPost.aspx
In this thread are some links and diagrams of the two coal-fired plants in MADison, WI. A ways down on the first page. Both plants are in the middle of town, one is in the middle of the UW campus.
Mike WSOR engineer | HO scale since 1988 | Visit our club www.WCGandyDancers.com
I am planning a small (Note small) plant with chimneys and feeds a industry. I noticed that on this thread is posting about the large door being only used for crane of machinery into and out of the facility. Does the overhead crane inside the place have the "Reach" to get to a boiler or turbine?
WHen i think of Power Plants I think of Conowingo Hydro or really large plants around the USA. However, I think there was a hospital or school power plant on the B&O that recieved coal up a steep grade.
Doesnt a power plant with coal have the ability to pipe hot water and steam to a industry?
Does the big brick chimneys have to rest on the ground or do the base must be elevated? Does it mean that there is a basement to some of the plants?
How many coal cars does one feed a small plant (In a workday) with three boilers about 120 ton each? I think some of the really big power plants consume 400 ton per boiler per hour in modern times, way too much for what I have in mind.
Doesnt the coal require some kind of cannon to be fired into the boiler to burn?
What is the different between a shore plant and those used in Maritime Commerce?
Didnt power plants require firebrick replacement or other services in addition to just coal?
How often would that big door be open to bring out or in machinery and why?
Finally what about alternative fuels? You think a coal plant would also have oil as a backup or in extreme cases a Steam Locomotive parked nearby and hooked up.
Sorry for many questions but Im hoping to learn more before construction starts.
Last Chance:
Some answers (comments) to some of your questions.
Conowingo is, as you state, a hydro-electric plant. Obviously there are no coal cars there.
When people start talking about hospitals, universities, or factories that get coal delivered up an unloading trestle, in many cases there was no power generation equipment associated with the coal. The coal was used only to feed a boiler which made steam for heating and hot water.
In other cases there would be a turbine generator. A boiler made steam, which was fed to the turbine to make power (electricity) which was used to power the factory. Many times the turbine used would be called an extraction turbine, especially if it were used in a refinery or a paperplant. Different processes in the plant would require steam at different pressures, so steam was extracted from the turbine at different locations (called stages) at the required pressures.
In some cases a larger power plant would provide steam heat to a larger area, say a city. Obviously we are talking a much bigger plant than one used to heat an industry. Pennsylvania Electric used to have a plant called Front Street (iirc) in Erie Pa. that did this.
The typical power plant is divided into two sections, the boiler (or reactor) and the turbine building. I'm familiar with the turbine building. That large door you are talking about generally goes into the crane bay. If there is more than one turbine in the building, there is typically more than one crane bay. The door is generally kept shut in the cold months and only opened to get stuff in or out. In the hot months it is not unusual to keep the door open continuously to get some air circulation. Yes, birds, bugs, and furry critters also sneak in.
The turbine sits on its own elevated foundation or pedestal. This is generally concrete, but steel foundations were sometimes used. The rest of the surrounding building is built around, but not connected to, the turbine pedestal. This is done so that vibrations in the rest of the plant won't affect the turbine operation. This is also helpful in some cases where the turbine wants to shake like heck so that the rest of the building is not affected. The turbine pedestal has three main floors. The top where the turbine sits is called the turbine deck. The area directly beneath (the second floor) is called the mezzanine. This level gets you access to the side of the condenser, some of the turbine valves, and the underside of the generator. The bottom floor is the basement. This is where the condenser sits. There are also a bunch of pumps and other auxiliary items.
In the example I described above, the floor of the basement is actually at ground level. So the railroad track comes through that large door into the basement. Now if you can imagine a big enough hole to sink my example into it, you'd have the turbine at ground level and the next two levels below ground level. In this case the big door and railroad track would enter the building at the turbine deck level.
Concerning what that door is used for, one place I worked had their plant storeroom in the turbine building. They'd open the door every time they had a delivery so that trucks could back through, or if they needed to forklift the trash out. They also had a small rail flatcar that they'd move into the plant during outages. They'd put a skid on it, then put the turbine rotor on the skid, then move the skid outside to clean the rotor.
The turbine building crane did have enough reach to go from the top of the elevated turbine pedestal down into the bay. The crane was generally sized to lift the largest (heaviest) turbine component that would be removed during a turbine inspection. The crane capacities ranged from 15 ton auxiliary hooks to 125 ton main hooks. In some cases there were two cranes on the crane rail and it was necessary to join the cranes together because the load exceeded the lifting capacity of the single crane. This was done electrically, sort of like MUing two engines together.
The big masonry smokestacks sit on the ground. I assume that they have a substantial foundation so that they don't sink under their own weight or get blown over in a windstorm.
As far as what the power plant burns, many boilers were built to burn coal but were then converted to burn oil because of polution concerns. Some of these were later converted to burn gas. Like anything else, the fuel of choice is usually what can be acquired the cheapest.
I'm not really familiar with ship power plant applications. I know that coal was originally used to power the boilers (once they got away from Fulton's woodburning boats), but I have no idea what they did with the ash. I presume that it got dumped overboard. There would be different types of turbines on the ship. There would be the propulsion turbines that drove the ships screws through a large gearing arrangement. When you see those WWII movies where the destroyer captain says "flank speed" or "full speed astern", what they are doing is either increasing the steam flow to go faster, or changing the steam flow to go in reverse. To provide electrical power, there were smaller turbine-generators called TG sets. The ship's boiler would provide steam to all these turbines.
Finally, I don't think they use a cannon to get the coal into a boiler. Generally the coal path is from the coal car onto a conveyer belt, out to the coal pile, moved back onto a conveyer belt, into a coal bunker inside the boiler building, drops down either on a coal feeder (or onto a pulverizer and then the coal feeder), and then into the boiler. To tell you the truth, I never did pay attention to how the coal actually got from the belt into the boiler. I think they might have used air to help it along, since the coal is pretty fine at that point. I think you are assuming that the coal is in lumps, like it used to be when it was shoveled in. That's not the case anymore.
As a final aside, the boiler or reactor folks always called the turbine the "rotating pressure reducer". They viewed the turbine as the place where the steam they made could be condensed so that they could get it back to reheat. I always had to point out to them that my side of the plant was the only side that made money.
Regards!
It wouldn't be unusual for a big city to have one or two older, smaller power plants 'in town' with one or two larger more modern plants located on the outskirts. I know here in St.Paul the High Bridge plant gets coal by rail in regular shipments, it's pretty close to downtown St.Paul and has been there a long time.
University of Minnesota gets coal for it's heating plant by rail, and uses an ALCO switcher to move the cars around!!
Historically electric generating stations were built as close as possible to the load center because transmission lines are expensive, transmission losses are costly, the technology for long-distance transmission had not been developed, and emissions regulations were limited or non-existant. Most coal-fired generating stations in the 1910-1950 era were built immediately adjacent to the industry they supported or as central as possible to the municipality they supplied. If possible they were built next to a lake or river to obtain free cooling water.
During the 1930s and 1940s rapid advancement was made in long-distance electrical transmission technology, in large part to enable the construction of power stations at remote dams such as Boulder, Grand Coulee, and Bonneville, and it became economical to employ. Beginning in the 1950s, many large generating stations were built mine-mouth in order to reduce the high cost of coal transportation whether by barge or rail, or both. Numerous mine-mouth plants were built in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, as well as several in Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico, and one in Washington State. Railroads were able to use the mine-mouth threat to convince the Interstate Commerce Commission to agree in 1958 to allow railroads to offer unit-train rates on a broad basis (which had been forbidden by law since the early 1900s). The first railroads to widely employ unit trains were the B&O, PRR, and Erie. As a result of railroads being able to reduce their cost of coal transportation drastically, mine-mouth plants were rendered less attractive to utilities and many large powerplants in the 1960-1970 era were constructed near to the load centers instead of at the mine.
Local emissions ordinances began appearing in the 1940s and with the enactment of the federal Clean Air Act in 1970 the small coal-fired powerplant inside a city became uneconomical. Many of these plants were old and their equipment obsolete, highly inefficient at their ability to convert BTUs to watt-hours because of their old technology, and thus were not economically attractive for retrofitting with emissions controls. In addition, emissions laws look at the local emissions "pool" and a plant within a high-air pollution area such as a city has much more restrictive law than a plant out in the open country where there is little other source of air pollution. Many city plants were converted to natural gas, and because they are inefficient are only used as peaking plants or for standby when the big coal plant out in the country is down for maintenance. Many of the city plants actually are completely decommissioned for the purpose of generating electricity but still stand because their substation is still in use, because they house small peaking generators (diesel or gas turbine), and because they're expensive to demolish.
Environmental laws appearing in the 1970s also made it more difficult for coal plants to use free lake or river water for cooling, because the elevated water temperature can destroy fisheries or the local ecology of the water body. As a result many modern plants use well water, or constructed their own reservoirs out in the countryside which they can legally heat to their heart's content.
There aren't very many city stations fueled by coal still in existence, but they do exist. Most coal fired power plants are now in the outskirts of cities (the cities have grown around them) and are large, mine mouth and large, or in the countryside and large. Small coal plants are a disappearing breed.
RWM
It seems that fuel oil is somewhere between bunker C and Desiel.
270 gallons make a ton. How much does this stuff get consumed and how long does it take to burn it to raise steam and turn power?
The reason Im asking is that 8 and 10 thousand gallon tank cars suddenly only hold...37 ton each or less and 4 of them on the power plant intake spur suddenly seems inadequate. Other power plant oil threads refer to hundreds of units in oil if not millions.
Am I on track here?
Last Chance wrote:It seems that fuel oil is somewhere between bunker C and Desiel.270 gallons make a ton. How much does this stuff get consumed and how long does it take to burn it to raise steam and turn power?The reason Im asking is that 8 and 10 thousand gallon tank cars suddenly only hold...37 ton each or less and 4 of them on the power plant intake spur suddenly seems inadequate. Other power plant oil threads refer to hundreds of units in oil if not millions.Am I on track here?
Are you on track ? That depends on where you are aiming to go
Is four 10 000 gallon tank cars on a power plant unloading spur reasonable for a model train layout?
Depends on what you are trying to model - the operation of a powerplant or railroading, and it depends how much selective compression you are willing to or forced to live with, given whatever amount of physical layout space you have available.
You can of course always increase the frequency of deliveries - ie deliver cuts of four cars more often, or postulate larger underground storage tanks, or postulate that today is a slow day since a lot of tank cars was delivered and unloaded yesterday or whatever.
You do what you can with what you have.
As a rule of the thumb when I draw a H0 scale track plan based on a prototype, I use 1:3 or 1:4 as a somewhat reasonable selective compression ratio for a switching layout - making a typical layout local freight train of about 8-10 cars the equivalent of a local with 30-40 cars in reality, or a spur with 4 cars on it the equivalent of about 12-16 cars in reality.
Seems to work okay for me visually, your mileage may vary
Grin, Stein
I had 4 per operations session planned and these were the little ones in the steam era. Once I starting to think about the late 70's and each tank car capacities increased I realized that power plant must be more hungry (If you please) and want to drink more of the fuel.
Space on my area happens to be limited, I think it cuts a 10 inch by two feet space so far depending on switch placement. So, a cut of 4 steam fuel tank cars or two/three modern big tankcars is the maximum.
I remember a very small boiler house that fed a campus of several buildings. It was a pair of boilers that were 12 feet across and about 20 long inside a large structure that had very tall windows. These things would roar in the morning supplying hot water to 4 seperate dorms I think there would be approx 460 people making morning preparations at the same time the Cafeteria would be fixing meals.
Ive seen other boilers and power plants over the years live or dead and knew that I would be modeling one someday. But details such as fuel useage/hour and maintaince is only now being dug up. Alot of these places were kind of not allowing stray drivers or lookyloos to poke around and take a look see.
In trucking we have witnessed some oversized loads out of Ohio with B&W Boilers and some of these loads required the very best equiptment and extreme math associated with high, wide and weight to run em legally and safely.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Here is a plant on the Mississippi north of st louis on the Illinois side and about 1 mile or less from town
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=qg9jqs7gny9m&style=b&lvl=1&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=21928960&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
And this building is a sub power plant in the middle of town a few blocks from me
http://maps.live.com/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=qgfxhp7gjw1h&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&scene=21923062&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&encType=1
Teamanglerx wrote:I am working on a N scale shelf layout and have run into a small layout problem. I want to model a power plant with coal cars coming to the plant. The problem is where do I place it on the layout? I orginally planned to put it near one of the ends but was wondering in really life how close are power plants to towns, cities, etc? Are there power plants placed within towns? Any info would help.
Doing some "library" reading this morning, it occurs to me that there is an option to your desire for a "power plant". A power plant to me indicates a facility that makes power. Even the smallest of these would take up a lot of space if all the normal accoutrements associated with a power plant were included. These would be the coal handling facilities, the ash handling facilities, the transformers, etc. An option to this would be a "boiler house", where there is only the steam generating part of the building.
If you have access to older magazine issues, the May 2002 issue of Railroad Model Craftsman had an article called "A Classic Industrial Structure: The Belin Works Boiler House". The article was by Rusty Recordon. There was a follow up article in the June 2002 issue where a model was made using styrene. According to the article, this was a two-boiler facility, and had an attached machinery room. There was a siding for dumping coal cars which looks like it held only two or three cars. The footprint of the main building in HO is 7-1/2 by 5-1/2 inches, so I guess in N scale it would be about half as big, which might be doable for the area on your layout that you were speaking of.
For my own purposes, I found the structure "rustic", as the prototype photos show it abandoned. The article says the place was built in 1908, and that "sometime in the 1950's an open-sided lean to shed was added...". So we could assume that maybe the place operated into at least 1960. I don't know what era you model, but maybe this will work for you. Of course, there is nothing to say that the place was kept up better and operated later!
regards
Since my HO power plant was the focal point of my old layout, I really didn't place much around it, other than more industries.
Larry
I live well in from the outskirts of a sprawling metropolitan area. Our friendly, neighborhood thermoelectric power plant is about 4 miles away, and rather closer to downtown. It's close to the railroad, but actually burns natural gas. (In this part of the country, nothing burns coal.)
A few hundred miles east, in the vicinity of Joseph City, AZ, is a HUMONGOUS coal-burning plant - in a semi-rural area. It probably supplies most of the power used in a 150-200 mile radius (with some left over to send to Phoenix.)
As for the oil burned in fixed boilers - at one time it WAS bunker C, aka #6 fuel oil. In some places, where it was available, #7 fuel oil was also used. Because of cost, the only diesel that would be burned for steam was probably contaminated with something that made it unsuitable for internal combustion applications. Boiler burners are a lot less finicky than diesel injectors, and a lot easier to clean while in operation.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
My industry complex uses natural gas for treating metal by heat and oil to make the steam to drive the forge among other things such as heating the buildings in winter. I plan my power plant to be a sort of a dual fuel facility with fuel oil in one set of tanks and a gas tank.
There is only so much room to do it all. I tried to solve the problem of interior access for heavy machinery into and out of the building proper. Track geometry just did not work. So I worked around the issue by planning a Heavy Haul Trailer with many axles and wheels and built a rail door for it into the building plans.
What about Abestoes and insulating materials other than Firebrick. How often would these things need to be replaced in a power or steam facility?
Last ChanceWhat about Abestoes and insulating materials other than Firebrick. How often would these things need to be replaced in a power or steam facility?
Probably not very often. My personal experience was with turbines and their associated large attached pieces and connecting piping. The company I worked for issued a drawing showing the different thicknesses of insulation that were required on the different pieces. Generally there was a desired external insulation surface temperature that was based on the temperature of the piece being insulated. So a turbine shell might get 8 inches of insulation around the steam inlet, and then get thinner insulation layers around cooler shell areas. When I first started, the turbine shell insulation was sprayed on. Then they went to block insulation. The blocks were layered until the desired thickness was obtained. Then they went to insulating blankets. These were also layered. The advantage of blanket insulation was that it could be removed and replaced after the turbine was disassembled for maintenance and then reassembled. Some turbines had combinations of insulation, based on their age. For example, the lower half turbine shell might have the original spray on stuff. The upper shell, which tended to get walked on during dis-assembly, might have had the spray on replaced with block. In addition, there might be blankets around the joint bolts since these needed to be accessed.
On pipes, the normal stuff I saw used was block insulation. Originally this was covered with what I would call a mud and cloth covering to keep everything in place and give it a good appearance. The best way I can describe this is what modelers would do when they dip the paper towel in plaster for scenery work. Later, some of the more modern plants covered everything with a thin metal flashing, or lagging. This was especially true in nuclear power plants where there was more money to spend, and in areas where the plant might have visitors.
I think they started to get away from asbestos products in the early 1970s, at least for initial application. But because of all the litigation that started to occur with the asbestos issues, many places started to have different programs put in place to identify where asbestos was used so that it could be either removed or encapsulated.
As I recall, nobody routinely removed and replaced insulation unless it was damaged. The exception was asbestos, where you had to have a special contractor come in to do the removal "safely". In that case, large areas of asbestos might be removed and replaced because of the setup charges to get a contractor on site initially.
If your question is related to whether or not the insulation was brought to site by train, I never saw it done that way. When the contracts for insulation were bid out, there were generally at least three bidders. Because of all the different thickness and materials required, the successful bidder (definition of bid award: the point where the winning contractor loses) generally trucked the material in as needed. I suspect that the contractors would get their material from a distributor somewhere, and it's possible that the distributor would get his materials by the carload.
Thank you for a wonderful post.
I had designed truck docks into the buildings as a way to get the small stuff in and out as necessary using the Industry trucking fleet that supplements the rail switcher's work.