I dont know much about railroading as i am just getting into the hobby. I am alomost complete with my track plan although i need some help completing it.
my questions are:
a train leaves the yard to deliver goods to, lets say, a factory. how are tracks and cars arranged at the factory to shuffle around the incoming goods, the outgoing goods and the empties?
do they use a switching locomotive?
how do they arrange the the train for next stop.
i am very curious about this process and if anyone would help me learn about it woudl be greatly appreciated
Well there have been whole books written about freight train operations !! But just a quick thumbnail sketch....
The train would be "blocked" in the yard, so all the cars going to factory A would be together to make switching easier, then the cars going to factory B, etc. A large company might get enough freight that a train with just cars for their factory or plant would be made up, otherwise a "way freight" usually would have cars for several industries.
If the train is delivering loads, it would go into the spur track next to the business and pick up the empty cars sitting there, and leave the loaded cars spotted where the business wanted them for unloading. A large plant, like a big brewery or steel mill, would have it's own switchers to move cars around. The company might have a small yard with several tracks where mainline trains would pick up and drop off cars, and then the company switcher would move the cars from the yard to different points around the plant.
Well, there's a lot of variables. But Usually, cars are in place begfore they leave the yard. On occasion, a local may shuffle ythe deck on a siding track and a passing track. If it's a large factory, here will be a switcher. If it's a large railroad and a small factory, the road switcher ( usually an older loco) will do it. If i's a large factory and a small railroad, the factory switcher might even bring things to the yard, but onlky from that factory ( or whathaveyou)
Factories themselves may have 3 or so tracks, commonly 2, but. One arrival, one depart, and a third to hold loaded cars that aren't up to the dock yet. Usually, hst third track can be used to stick things and get them out of the way. LArger factories may even have their own baby yard, where a whole bunch of cars are to be shoved and pulled as needed.
Or, there's places like North Vernon, where the yard holds all the cars for a plastics plant further down. It;s actually a transfer yard between CSX and CMPA (Madison Railroad) but the plastics plant seems to be the only industry using that yard. They have 3 tracks to offload into, plus a transfer dock for trucks of the same company.
Confused yet?
-Morgan
Thanks guys. yall are clearing things up for me.
So factories may have an arival departure,one for loaded cars, one to store cars, and they are all off the main?
are there any pictures or diagrams online i can look at of this. any examples?
thanks
In the modern era, large enough industrial concerns may use a trackmobile (or equivalent railcar mover) to shunt freight cars around their sidings - cheaper than using a full-fledged switcher (especially if you need to only move 2-3 cars at most), and more convienient than waiting for the railroad switcher.
yes ive seen some track mobiles in action. i can see where that would be more convient. and cheaper
are there any pictures or diagrams of track plans at a factory?
i really need a picture or diagram of how factories layout there tracks. ive searched hard and cant find a thing
go to bing.com/maps and do a bird's eye view of just about any industry in the world. the magnification is usually great enough to see the tracks and freight cars. it also comes in handy for checking out the parking lot at the mall to see how busy they are before you leave home.
grizlump
im gonna try that .. thanks.. but as i am not very informed on railroading a picture with discription or a diamgram would help me out even more
are there any track plans that i could look at to learn how factories and industrys lay out there tracks
A single spur coming directly off the mainline isn't uncommon, and is probably the most common arrangement seen on model railroad layouts. This satellite view is of an industry served by a single spur coming directly off the BNSF main track on its mainline to Richmond, CA. The distance between the main track and industry is likely due to the need for the spur to drop some distance because the industry is on the valley floor and the main track is above the base of the hill.
Here is a picture of a larger industry closeby that has auxiliary tracks along the main track to serve the industry. You can zoom in on the picture for a more detailed view.
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=pinole+california&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.504711,56.337891&ie=UTF8&t=h&ll=38.020289,-122.24144&spn=0.007421,0.013754&z=16&iwloc=A
Mark
awesome mark. i looked at both pictures but i still do not see how the industries can recieve cars, send cars, and store cars with just one track running to each industry.
i would think an industry would need a track off the main to use as an arrival/departure, some aux to store cars and then some connecting to the main for manuevering. but as i have stated i do not know much about railroading as i am new to this
spassalaqua awesome mark. i looked at both pictures but i still do not see how the industries can recieve cars, send cars, and store cars with just one track running to each industry. i would think an industry would need a track off the main to use as an arrival/departure, some aux to store cars and then some connecting to the main for manuevering.
i would think an industry would need a track off the main to use as an arrival/departure, some aux to store cars and then some connecting to the main for manuevering.
It depends on the nature of the particular industrial plant. Now here is a view of a Budweiser brewery in Fairfield, CA, now served by the UP, that has a small yard serving the several spur tracks:
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=fairfield,+ca&sll=37.991834,-122.286072&sspn=0.85284,1.760559&ie=UTF8&ll=38.233596,-122.091708&spn=0.013282,0.027509&t=h&z=15
spassalaqua i looked at both pictures but i still do not see how the industries can recieve cars, send cars, and store cars with just one track running to each industry.
Not all industries both recieve and ship by rail. Not all industries recieve and ship at the same time. Not all industries "store cars" (unless they own the cars and the track, the industry is charged a daily rate for storing cars).
Imagine a building alongside a single spur, 3 cars long, with two doors in the building. The switcher puts a loaded car next to door 1, the empty car next to door 2 and a storage car in the 3rd spot.
One spur, an industry is loading, unloading and storing simultaneously. Happens at thousands of industries all over the US every day.
The vast majority of industries only get a car or two a day (or less). Why would you need all that room for that low of traffic. Now there are large industries, oil refineries, steel mills, shipyards, mines, etc. that may have all those tracks. But for every one of them there are a hundred that are just a single track.
If an industry recieves a loaded car it has 24 hours to unload the car (unless its a private car on private track) and when an empty is spotted the industry has 48 hours to load it. If it doesn't load/unload it in time, the industry is charged demurrage. Lets say $75 a car a day. So if you keep 10 loads and 10 empties "stored" awaiting spotting, you are probably wracking up $1500 a day in demurrage charges, lets say you do that 300 days a year, that's $450,000 in demurrage charges to look at those cars sitting outside your plant (there are other rules for demurrage and the charges will vary by era and railroad, but you get the idea).
Most switching consists of pulling the cars out of the spur and then putting the cars that go into the spur back into the spur in the order they go. No storage tracks, no arrival departure tracks needed. The outbound cars become part of the train and the train goes down the railroad to the next industry and repeats the process. In 99% of industries the cars won't move again until the local comes back the next day or the day after.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dave h, that is great info. thanks. that is what i was looking for. i understand a lot more now knowing that all industries dont recieve and ship and dont see the need for all that traffic.
the only thing i got confused about was your last paragraph.
lets take mark post and his link for example. how would the train go about loading, or unloading cars at this industry
http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=pinole+california&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=27.504711,56.337891&ie=UTF8&ll=38.010484,-122.222643&spn=0.006661,0.013754&t=h&z=16
http://www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?v=2&FORM=LMLTCP&cp=qb1mf34tf0nr&style=b&lvl=2&tilt=-90&dir=0&alt=-1000&phx=0&phy=0&phscl=1&scene=7867986&encType=1
Looks pretty straightforward. They're some sort of carbon or graphite processor. My idea is that whatever they receive shows up...in something? Looks like they can handle boxcars and covered hoppers. It gets unloaded at those two spots, goes inside, magic happens, and then they ship out finished whatever it is they do in trucks.
I understand this is a carbon black processor and presume the raw material comes from the nearby petroleum refineries of which there are at least five or six in a radius of less than 15 miles (in Richmond, Hercules, Martinez (2), and Benicia).
Edit -- did some fact checking and found there are five refineries in the area: ConocoPhillips in Rodeo, Tosco in Avon, Chevron in Richmond, Shell in Martinez, and Valero in Benicia.
thanks for the examples.. ive learning a lot by them anymore?
spassalaqualets take mark post and his link for example. how would the train go about loading, or unloading cars at this industry
Trains don't load or unload cars. They spot or pull cars. the industry loads or unloads them.
Assume the train is going left to right.
Train pulls up. Engines uncouple from the train.
Engines back down the spur. They see what needs to be pulled and tells the industry they have two cars for them. Industry tells them where the cars go.
Lets number the cars 1-5 left to right. Cars 2 and 5 are outbound. New car A goes to spot 1, car 1 goes to spot 2, new car B goes to spot 3 and cars 3 and 4 go to spots 4 & 5.
The crew would couple up all 5 cars and pull them out to the main.
They would couple into the train, pul car A up and set it over to the spur. (spur : A)
They would set car 1 onto the spur. (spur A-1)
They would go back to their train, pull up to car B and set that onto the spur. (spur : A-1-B)
They would shove back to their train with any cars off their train.
They would set cars 3 & 4 back to the spur.(spur: A-1-B-3-4)
Still holding onto car 5, they would shove back to the plant.
They would set car A on spot1, set car 1 on spot 2, set car B on spot 3, set cars 3 & 4 on spots 4 & 5.
They would hold onto car 5 and come back out to the main, couple car 5 onto their train, get an air test and depart.
I am sure there are lots of other ways to make this move, and this is just one of them. I have also left out all the handbrake setting etc.
Capeesh?
this is a bit long winded but since i am never at a loss for words, here goes
i will describe to you how we handled industry switching on the Penn Central back in the late sixties.
our location had several industies on line that we switched on second trick. as i remember they were St Louis auto shredding, a scrap processor, allied chemical, swift chemical, a fertilizer plant, hershey warehouse, the chocolate people, hunter packing co, shipped tank car loads of lard, oneil lumber, obviously a lumber yard and several others that i can't recall.
loads and empties for loading arrived at our yard in westbound trains and from various connections on the St Louis switching district. outbound moves were pretty much the reverse route of the inbounds when a car for one of these customers arrived, it was switched into a designated yard track used for industry cars only.
i don't remember all the industry track configurations but it seems like the chemical plants only had one track and the cars were spotted for loading or unloading per their instructions. covered hoppers mostly. the lumber yard had one short track and wanted their loads spotted where they could get at them with a fork lift. hunter packing had two tracks, one for tank car loading and another dock track for loading out an occasional load of frozen pancreases. these went into a mechanical reefer for Lilly in Indianapolis for insulin production. (they no longer shipped meat by rail when i worked at the RR) hershey had one track along side their warehouse where they unloaded the chocolate from their own leased rail cars.
there was a clerical job in our freight office that kept a record of all the arriving industry cars and notified each of these customers when we had something for them. they would then order the car in when they saw fit to do so. the customers likewise advised him when they had a load or empty to pull out of their plant.
he provided the industry yard crew with switch lists showing what cars went where and on which track (if there was more than one) and at what particular spot on that track the car was to be placed. the crew would dig out the cars on the list and line them up accordingly before leaving the yard. he also provided that crew with lists showing what cars to pull and/or respot at the customer's siding.
the customers provided him with a bill of lading for outbound traffic so we would know what to do with the car when it was pulled out.
he also kept demurrage records on the railroad owned cars and the customer had only so much free time to hold the car before he was assessed a daily charge for doing so.
strangest commodity we delt with was an ocassional gondola load of manure out on National Stock Yards. it was always billed to Moonlight Mushroom Farms somewhere in Pennsylvania. (yes, they do keep them in the dark and feed them b.s.) in warm weather if we had one of these loads going east and a particularly troublesome conductor was on that train, we would try to place it close to the rear end. he wouldn't usually notice untill they were out on the road and all that stinking, contaminated straw started blowing in the open windows on the caboose. then he would get on the radio and scream like a Lutheran farmer.
industries located out on the line outside the switching district were served by a local freight train that worked between Terre Haute and E St Louis. it was a six day job that came west m/w//f and went back east on t/th/sat. that operation was similar to the yard industry switching except it was done over about 150 miles of route. they usually worked all indutries with trailing point switches only and took the rest of the traffic with them and brought it back the next day when they were going the other way. that was to save running around cars on the heavily used main line.
i never heard of a through freight setting out or picking up cars at individual industries but in other parts of the country with lower traffic density, that may be the case.
spassalaquathanks for the examples.. ive learning a lot by them anymore?
Here's one: Google Maps, Gonzalez, Florida
This location should show the site of Plastic Coated Papers. It's a single spur, with locations for multiple covered hoppers loaded with plastic pellets, and a couple box car doors. I've seen as many as nearly a half-a-dozen cars spotted there. They typically stay a day or two. There is a local that runs out of P'cola every day, that switches this siding, including the branch to what used to be Monsanto (if you follow this line north, you will see the branch curve off to the right). The local simply takes the siding heading northward, and switches off the back of the train. Once done, it takes the front part of the train, and takes the branch to Monsanto. When done, it takes what's left, and continues north on the main, and switches the paper mill a few miles northward. Not infrequently, through trains will leave cuts of cars on the siding there, and the local will take them across Hwy 29 (to the left of the tracks), into the yard that you can see (if you follow the line northward). There are a couple other industries that get switched at the paper mill, to the right of the main line. There are also a couple industries further north (one is a plant that makes 2x4s from those skinny pines, and sends wood chips back south to the paper mill--they are designed to work together). This whole section is pretty interesting to me, and I would love to model it some day, though vast amounts of compression will be necessary. ;-) Right now, I'm just modeling the Port of Pensacola, downtown. It's busy enough itself. But I think you can get a grasp of how this part works. More questions? feel free to ask.
-Jon
spassalaqua i looked at both pictures but i still do not see how the industries can recieve cars, send cars, and store cars with just one track running to each industry
1) Industry has two RR cars at it's single track - green car ready to be picked up, yellow car is not done loading/unloading yet and orange car (on arriving train) is inbound for the industry.
2) Engine leave rest of train on main track (or siding or wherever it is), pulls forward with the car to be delivered, backs up to the industry - gets an okay from the warehouse foreman that his people can take a break in loading/unloading the yellow car while the RR moves cars around, and then pulls both the departing car, the halfway done car and the new car forward again.
)
3) Leaves the outbound car by the rest of the train cars, puts back the half done car and the new car
4) Hooks up to the train, heads on to the next industry.
Almost all switching can be done by an engine pulling one or more cars forward past a turnout, throwing the turnout and backing down another track to pick up more cars or drop off one or more cars.
Want to change the order of the yellow and orange car ? Engine forward, throw turnout, back down other track, grab orange car, forward, back onto first track, leave orange car. Forward, back, grab yellow car, forward, back, hook yellow car to orange car. Now either take them away somewhere, or forward with both cars, throw turnout, back with both cars.
You don't need any more than two tracks and a turnout to do most switching.
Some industries have more tracks and more car spots, for different purposes. Tank cars delivered here, hopper cars of grain over there, box cars with cardboard over by that loading dock, shipping boxed products on pallets in a fourth place.
Here is a pretty neat description of switching for an imaginary "produce district" on a model railroad built by Linda and Dave Sand: http://www.sandsys.org/modelrr/modelbuilt/pi/. Read the description "Working the produce district industries" at the bottom of the page, click on and look at the track diagrams further up on page.
Here is a link to another thing Linda and Dave made: a spot diagram (showing where RR cars can be delivered for industries) for a group of industries on their Cedar River Terminal RR layout. Compare Eddie's Groceries (with a single track with room for one car) with Shamrock Flour, which has nine car locations on six different tracks where cars can be left or picked up.
Grin, Stein
steinjrHere is a link to another thing Linda and Dave made: a spot diagram
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I think we need a better link
FlashwavesteinjrHere is a link to another thing Linda and Dave made: a spot diagram I think we need a better link
Here - root of their web page: http://www.sandsys.org/
Spot diagrams: Model Railroading - Models Built - Cedar River Terminal
Description of industries in Produce district Model Railroading - Models Built - Plymouth Industrial.
Smile, Stein
amazing guys thanks so much. everyone of you has been a great help. ive really learned a lot and found answers to all my questions so far.
thanks a lot guys