Definitely happens and far more often than you think with short lines in particular. I've seen it in multiple situations with multiple products. In particular with grain lines where grain is loaded or fertilizer is unload. I've seen it with big products like transformers or wind mill trains. I've seen it with small shortlines with aggregate service. It's rare on the Class i roads, but US/CA/MX shortlines are usually very open to it.
Back in the really old days, before the Civil War, one of our local railroads had more freight customers than cars and of course, very few of the customers had sidings.
The last train of the day would drop cars off, leaving them on the mainline at the various towns. The first train in the morning would gather all of these cars before normal operations could begin.
Kevin
Atlantic & Hibernia
wp8thsub What you're suggesting would be EXTREMELY rare, assuming it would ever happen at all. Should a customer require cars to be spotted for loading, a spur track would be the solution. Somebody may be able to dig up an obscure example.
What you're suggesting would be EXTREMELY rare, assuming it would ever happen at all. Should a customer require cars to be spotted for loading, a spur track would be the solution. Somebody may be able to dig up an obscure example.
I just finished reading a newly released book, The Black Mountain Railway by John Beach (Tarheel Press). This was a backwoods railway in the mountains of North Carolina that was originally built to serve several lumber companies and which connected to the Clinchfield. In later years, it became known as the Yancey Railroad, and I did have the pleasure of visiting that line several times. The line in the steam era operated 4-6-0s and a 90-ton 3-truck Shay.
The text describes some of the day-to-day operations in the WWI and 1920's time period, where they would indeed leave a freight car on the main for unloading by a nearby business, with the understanding that the business was to have the car unloaded or loaded and ready to go by train time tomorrow. The car to be spotted would be put at the end of the train and just dropped in place and blocked there, then the train the next day would come along and push it back up the line. Clearly, problems were presented if the business didn't complete those tasks in time and this did involve the pushing or pulling of the "drop" in front of the locomotive to get it to a place to form the train into a more conventional manner.
So, yes, there are examples for this happening. This example is clearly a true short line that was closely connected to the community and was willing to do things to help customers.
Bill
The now abandoned Wabash 4th District had a grain loading conveyor very near the GR&I signal tower in Wolcottville and would load onesie and twosies grain cars directly on the main. The line was rarely used, so tying up traffic wasn't an issue.
The Commonwealth Railway in Suffolk, VA, once received a high-wide transformer for a substation along the line in Portsmouth, and they spotted it on the main near the substation. The electric utility took a few days to gather everything to unloads the transformer, so every time Commonwealth had traffic further up the line, they had to move that durned transformer to get past, then put it back. With 3-4 trains a day, and the situation lasting about 4 days, I'm sure that got old fast...
I used to be clueless, but i've turned that around 360 degrees.
grinnell A company loaded wood chip cars on the Albany & Eastern branch line from Lebanon to Sweet Home in Oregon. (A 2009 vintage view in Google Eartth shows a dozen cars sitting on the 'main'.) The mills in Sweet Home were closed and those tracks were used to store spare center beam flats, so thru traffic was not a problem. The operational problem with not having a siding was that they would have to drag the pick-ups back a couple of miles to the nearest siding, where they were temporarily placed and then go back to deliver the set-outs. A couple of years ago they got a grant to 'upgrade' the line and they put in a siding. Grinnell
A company loaded wood chip cars on the Albany & Eastern branch line from Lebanon to Sweet Home in Oregon. (A 2009 vintage view in Google Eartth shows a dozen cars sitting on the 'main'.) The mills in Sweet Home were closed and those tracks were used to store spare center beam flats, so thru traffic was not a problem. The operational problem with not having a siding was that they would have to drag the pick-ups back a couple of miles to the nearest siding, where they were temporarily placed and then go back to deliver the set-outs. A couple of years ago they got a grant to 'upgrade' the line and they put in a siding.
Grinnell
That would be the type of situation I think would be plausible for the OP. You're speaking of a situation where traffic on the existing branch line has ebbed and flowed due to customers disappearing and appearing on the line over time.
Tracks aren't built and abandoned as quickly as customers might come and go, so a railroad having to stop a train, fetch cars that are blocking the line and park them somewhere, go back for the train and then reposition the cars would be a time consuming mess that would probably only last a few years until a more permanent solution could be found.
And modeling that type of operation might not be that enjoyable consideringn all of the back and forth movements needed to get the train down the line. Even in model railroading, operating efficiently is more fun than operating inefficiently, IMO.
- Douglas
A rigging co. I used to work for did an emergency replacement of a failed transformer at the Muddy Run Hydro Electric Plant on the Susquehanna River in Pennslyvania. We used the ex. PRR main line that runs along the river at the plant to load the bad transformer out onto a heavy duty flat car and unload the replacement. I think we had a 10 or 12 hour window to get it done and a locomotive was there to take the flat car even if we weren't done to open the main line back up.
The only customer which had widespread activity worked on the main (or on passing sidings off the main) was the US Post Office.
Note that all of the examples cited were of the, "Mixed train daily," (or every other day, or shut down for the weekend) variety of short line. They wouldn't be practical for any rail line with even moderate traffic.
Of course, there are lots of routes, even routes with heavy traffic, where the main line terminates at the end-of-the-line customer's gate.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
After Penn Central spun off the former PRR Mercersurg Branch in Pennsylvania, the newly formed Mercersburg Railroad took over. Gibbles Potato Chip Co. had (still has) a plant located where the branch crossed US Route 11 south of Marion, PA., near the PC (Conrail) connection. There never was a spur to serve the plant, but the Mercersburg RR's Alco S-2 switcher would pick up cars at the interchange and leave a loaded car of potatoes on the mainline beside Gibbles while it proceeded down the branch to work other customers. Returning, the S-2 would pick up the empty potato car before arriving back at the interchange. This was around the early 1980's, and the operation lasted about 2 years. It's abandoned now.
As you can imagine, this was not a busy mainline, by any definition.
Tom
Note that the Original Poster is talking about a mill, not Less-than-Carload (LCL) that can be loaded or unloaded in minutes. And there are other customers further up the line.
Yes there may be the (very) odd exception here or there where this was done for regular freight, but why model something so atypical when the obvious solution of adding a spur is so simple (on the model and the prototype?)
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
My motto is "never say never," but of course it depends on time, place and circumstance.
Two 'roads that come to mind where I'm sure this happened were the Erie's New York and New Jersey and Northern Branch Railroads, both branch lines in Bergen County New Jersey. After both had settled into their roles as commuter 'roads by the 1890's there was a "window" during the middle of the day for freight train operations. LCL loads would have been dropped off at freight houses on the main line, in addition to train stations and consignees on the line as well. Some customers, the bigger ones, did have spurs, however.
The New Jersey and New York survives today as New Jersey Transit's Pascack Valley Line. The Northern Branch (now CSX) operates only up to Englewood NJ. There's no delivery of freight from a stop on the main line on either 'road today.
There is a wonderful photo taken by Linn Westcott that has been reproduced more than once in MR and in some of the Kalmbach books showing a flatbed truck backed up to a boxcar (part of a train) at a grade crossing, and being loaded with a drum or two of (presumably) oil or kerosene. As I recall the caption said that this was a Less than Carload Lots (LCL) car at a stop of a local freight. So the freight car would not be parked on the main - rather the train stopped and presumably the customer was alerted to what time to be there to meet it. In that sense not all that different than baggage or express being unloaded at a depot during a train stop. Stopping to do this at a grade crossing would seem decidedly unusual. But perhaps it was common enough for Westcott to know he needed to be there with his camera.
I think the railroad was the Wabash.
Dave Nelson
kh25 Ok doing some research here's an a example in the early 2000s the new hampshire north coast used to spot a tank car on their main line in Rochester NH it was spotted on a Friday evening or early Saturday morning and unloaded to a tanker truck over the weekend and picked up mtg on Monday this is generally a Mon thru Friday. I also found the maine central Cobossee Branch where the main line ran along the edge of a steel distributor and they spotted cars in the main because there was no siding.
Ok doing some research here's an a example in the early 2000s the new hampshire north coast used to spot a tank car on their main line in Rochester NH it was spotted on a Friday evening or early Saturday morning and unloaded to a tanker truck over the weekend and picked up mtg on Monday this is generally a Mon thru Friday.
I also found the maine central Cobossee Branch where the main line ran along the edge of a steel distributor and they spotted cars in the main because there was no siding.
Shortlines and branch line operations can have their own uniqueness and one-off operating processes.
Was the main line unused over the weekend? In which case it would have turned into a spur for those two days. Are these circumstances where the industry's are at the end of the mainline..where the train shoved the cars to the industry then returned later to pick them up with no trains trunning in the intervening time?
I think it depends on how often the mainline was used as a mainline...how often a train unrelated to the spotted cars would have to travel beyond the industry. Of course, the train would have to move the cars out of the way then place them back again, and, it would need a spur or siding somewhere close by anyway in order to get around the spotted cars.
If used as a true mainline for many trains, it would be much more cost effective to build a spur or a siding, at least as close to the industry as possible. If there was no room for a spur, the heavily used mainline might make it not cost effective to serve the industry...the railroad would say "no thank you". You might want to have this in mind if you wish to replicate the prototype.
You could have a siding with more than one industry being served, but you wouldn't block your mainline with cars being loaded or unloaded. Only thing I can think of remotely close would be a milk train, where the train stopped at a loading platform to pick up cans of milk before taking off to the next stop. But they didn't leave cars sitting on the main.
Agree with Rob here. The assumed additional customers would need to be low demand ones, so that might explain such an arrangement. Otherwise, very rare and unusual.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
Rob Spangler
RHello I'm looking examples where customers either load or unload from the main line especially a branch line where the mill is along the branch main line and the main line continues past to serve other. customers. And how the procedure was for spoting their Cars thank you