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What are (all) the steps of transporting materials via boxcar? What type of buildings do I need?
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You need distribution warehouses as indicated in previous postings. There are two major types of warehouses used in the northwest. <br /> <br />One type of warehouse is based on some sort of a rectangular building with loading doors spaced far enough apart that you could spot the longest cars with ther doors closely aligned. This means that as a string of cars is run down the loading siding, each car must be uncoupled as it is spotted in front of a loading door. Sometimes there will be corrugated roofing over the loading doors and the adjacent boxcar. <br /> <br />Another type of warehouse is again based on a rectangular building. In this instance, there is a door in the end of the building where the track runs the full length of the building. The loading dock also runs adjacent to the track for the length of the building. Some of these warehouses have a series of parallel tracks running the length of the building. In large warehouses long strings of cars must be uncoupled about half way down the loading dock to allow for bridges to be dropped for fork truck traffic. This type of warehouse is useful for unloading goods during inclement weather, which is most of the time in the northwest. <br /> <br />All loading docks have metal loading mats that must be placed as bridges from the dock to each car. Fort trucks are used to place and remove the loading mats. Some mates are wider than others depending on the boxcar door configurations. Mats become slick when water is added. Trust me on this, I almost slid all of the way through a boxcar one night. The backend of my "grabber" was hanging out over the tracks with the load and my drive wheel still in the car. Fortunately I was able to crawl over the load, back into the car, and located another "grabber" to safely pull my rig back into the boxcar. <br /> <br />Warehouses sometimes get full. When boxcars arrive the must sit on staging tracks waiting for warehouse floorspace. Rail cars that sit cost businesses money. As soon as cars are emptied they are usually moved to a staging tracks for pickup. I have seen instances where strings of cars were pulled, cars added, cars taken away, and the strings pushed right back into the warehouse. Shippers go nuts pulling and replacing door mats.
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