1950 LCL Operation On a Model Railroad?

[N Scale Train Boy]

Hi all!

I'm a member of The Rensselaer Model Railroad Society (Home of the NEB&W), and I'm looking into LCL Operations for a possible layout expansion. We model the year 1950 from Troy, NY north through Vermont and into Canada for those unfamiliar with the railroad. If anyone has any suggestions as to where to look to learn about LCL ops, or any information they can share with me about it, please help me out! Thanks a lot everyone!

[dehusman]

LCL is a freight rate.  It normally applies to shipments of a smaller size, for example 5000 lbs or less.  More than that and the railroad charges carload rates.

LCL is not necessarily expedited.  Expedited service is express and handled in the passenger train network.  LCL is a freight service and handled in the freight train network. 

There are 3 levels of LCL service:

Local:  It is used to distributed small quantities of shipments to smaller stations and operates from a larger freight house, more or less the division level, to smaller stations.  A boxcar is loaded with LCL for the stations on a local's route.  The local stops at each station and unloads or loads LCL shipments off the main without setting out the car.  The shipments are taken to the freight portion of the depot and the agent handles notifications, releases, delivery and accepts and bills new shipments.

Freight house:  At larger locations, they may handle enough LCL to warrant dedicating one or more cars to deliver or pick up LCL.  Cars come from a hob freight house and are sent to the satellite freight house where they are distributed from there or broken down to the various locals.  Freight is recieved and consolidated into boxcars which take it to hubs where it is sorted.

Hubs :  Hubs are regional sorting centers.  They are the large freight houses you see with multiple parallel tracks with 30 or 40 boxcars lined up.  LCL shipments come in from smaller freight houses and other railroads, unloaded, sorted and then sent out to the other freight houses and other railroads.

LCL was a hub and spoke operation.  Railroads had hub freight houses that recieved all the LCL from other railroads and then resorted for that railroad.  Any LCL from any point on the PRR going to any point on the MP would be routed through St Louis.  The PRR would send it to the the MP at St Louis and the MP would resort it for the MP.    

An LCL shipment might be resorted a half dozen, dozen times on a trip across the country.

For a railroad like the NEB&W, I would imagine that there was one major hub freight house and that routed cars to the major fright houses who then served local customers or resorted it into boxcars for the locals serving the smaller stations that only recieved or shipped a couple hundred pounds a day or so.

[SeeYou190]

N Scale Train Boy

We model the year 1950 from Troy, NY north through Vermont and into Canada for those unfamiliar with the railroad.

Shame on anyone that is not familiar with the NEW ENGLAND BERKSHIRE AND WESTERN, and the smaller OLDENBURG AND LAKE RICHELIUE! You have some homework to do.

-Kevin

[NHTX]

N scale Train Boy;

If you are interested in LCL operations, may I recommend the book "Freight Cars Rolling", by Lawrence W. Sagle, Library of Congress Card no. 60-53409.  Mr Sagle worked for the B&O, in their traffic department, and the book takes you behind the scenes of moving freight by rail, including many of the forms used in shipping.  This book  might be found on  Amazon or, a seller of used books.  My original 1960 copy wore out and, I replaced it last year, cost: $15.00.

I also recommend the video "A Great Railroad at Work".  It was put out by the New Haven Railroad in the 1940s and there is a sequence about the shipment of a bicycle a woman in Boston buys for her grandson and ships to him in New York, by LCL, over the New Haven RR of course.                                                              Lots of steam and good information in a. 30+minute video that is available on Youtube.

[Erie1951]

I think there's a series the New Haven Railroad released back then. The 1942 YouTube video that I watched entitled "A Great Railroad at Work" was a publicity film about the general operations of the railroad from passenger and freight to backshop and yard scenes. It's a terrific short narrated by Lowell Thomas, the famous writer and newscaster. I'll look for the one about LCL freight later on.

[N Scale Train Boy]

Everyone,

Thank you so much for your help! New question - Does anyone have any ideas on how one would run LCL Operations on a model railroad? Again - any and all help is appreciated!!