Now that I have paid some attention to the car maintenance works near where I live I have realised the potential of such a facility for interesting car movements. I'm not planning to model an entire works... this 'small' one fans out to about 15 tracks in two groups. I've been seeing a much more modest facility that is little more than two track tin sheds about two cars long either side of a feed track. Just one track has a heavy crane/hoist straddling it outside one of the sheds.
From the few pics I've seen of independent car maintainers in the USA the second seems to be something that occurs around the USA.
So I'm wondering whether this sort of thing occurred in the 1980s and,if so, where I might search for pics... or if anyone has any pics?
Please
Can't help with pics, unfortunately, but as far as history is concerned, the small-size branch/shortline car shop dates back to well before the '80s...
The 1880's, that is! I don't doubt that such facilities date clear back to John Bull and The Best Friend of Charleston.
I have seen (but failed to photograph) the equivalent at several rail museums and tourist lines.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Current practice is, if a rail car needs repair then the railroad that has it in its possession performs the repair and bills the owning road; at least among the major roads that interchange rolling stock.
Most such repairs are minor and are performed outdoors on a RIP (Repair In Place) track.
If a rail car needs extensive repair, the owning railroad will have a "car shop" for that purpose. For example, the Illinois Central car shops were in Centralia, Illinois, where they could totally rebuild a car.
Here is a contract shop in Millard, NE:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=millard,+ne&sll=41.160813,-96.054164&sspn=0.005606,0.009452&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Millard,+Douglas,+Nebraska&ll=41.213804,-96.129963&spn=0.005601,0.009452&t=h&z=17
It does contract work on private cars and has done some work on ARMN reefers. It also repaired one of NMRA anniversary boxcars. The industrial lead was recently shortened to this point. It used to be call the "Old Main Line" because the track with the hoppers on it was originally the transcontinental main line of the UP. When they built the Lane Cutoff, it was downgraded to a branch. Ironically the local NMRA division meets in a Library that was built on the site of the Papillion depot and former UP main line.
Its a nice size for a model railroad.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
dehusmanHere is a contract shop in Millard, NE. It does contract work on private cars and has done some work on ARMN reefers. It also repaired one of NMRA anniversary boxcars. The industrial lead was recently shortened to this point. It used to be call the "Old Main Line" because the track with the hoppers on it was originally the transcontinental main line of the UP. When they built the Lane Cutoff, it was downgraded to a branch. Ironically the local NMRA division meets in a Library that was built on the site of the Papillion depot and former UP main line. Its a nice size for a model railroad.
Here is a contract shop in Millard, NE.
You can post smaller links by highlighting some words, clicking on the link button, and making those words (or that word the link). That way, you do not have to scroll side to side to read the posts. I did that with your post.
Here is a Bird's Eye View of the same shop.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
You might try a major library and see if they have bound volumes of RR trade publications such as Railway Age and Progressive Railroading for photos. Contract repair shops have been around for a long time but their numbers have increased in the last 20 years or so. This increase is mainly due to the increase in the number of non-railroad owned cars. Class One railroads have reduced the size of their owned fleets, thus almost 70% of the fleet is now either shipper or lessor owned. The major railroad's labor agreements usually required work done on their own equipment to be performed in their own shops. One exception was when a car was off line on another railroad and needed more than minor repairs, Rather than have to ship the car all the way home the car could be sent to a closer contract repair shop. Since private car owners have always been able to contract the work out, thus the recent increase in the number of independent repair shops.
Depending on the extent of work being done these facilities can be nothing more than a siding with a tool shed to large facilities covering acres of land with mutiple tracks and buildings. In addition to repair shops there are also facilities that do clean outs of covered hoppers, tank cars and box cars.
A google search of some of the larger contract repair companies will probably give you some additonal information. Progress Rail Services, Rescar, Transco, The Andersons, Greenbrier, and GATX are some of the big ones.
Thanks for the replies and brilliant links. I must get some sleep now buut will came back later.
tomikawaTT Can't help with pics, unfortunately, but as far as history is concerned, the small-size branch/shortline car shop dates back to well before the '80s... The 1880's, that is! I don't doubt that such facilities date clear back to John Bull and The Best Friend of Charleston. I have seen (but failed to photograph) the equivalent at several rail museums and tourist lines. Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
cacole Current practice is, if a rail car needs repair then the railroad that has it in its possession performs the repair and bills the owning road; at least among the major roads that interchange rolling stock. Most such repairs are minor and are performed outdoors on a RIP (Repair In Place) track. If a rail car needs extensive repair, the owning railroad will have a "car shop" for that purpose. For example, the Illinois Central car shops were in Centralia, Illinois, where they could totally rebuild a car.
Thanks both
I've quoted you together because I think your answers are closely related.
I'm aware from my research of both local repairs and RIP tracks. I would suggest that the practices go back much earlier than the 1880s. I suspect that getting the work done promptly ans as-and-where needed only began to be sorted out (and then codified) with the establishement of the ARA (or was it the AAR... I can never tecall which one came first).
Main reason I'm waffling on about this is that my intro to US RR came through a resource of US RR professional journals starting from about the 1870s (if not earlier). One of the things that I loved reading through was the monthly reports of settlements of car repair disputes. They were far more entertaining than CSI, Murder She Wrote and all that stuff.
I don't have a copy to hand but the sort of thing was that car XBD993000 was damaged by car NNFR200091 rolling past it with part of its load overhanging (so there was a whole lot of other stuff about compensation for damage to the load) which should have been noticed by the crew of GHRR but it had only just been handed off to them by TNTRR who in turn were only switching it for...
The paper trails were incredible. Some of them clearly went on for years as everyone tried to shove the claim off onto someone else.
Another thing that went into all this was that, while DFGH RR might repair a car on its RIP track and send the bill to the owning road, the owning road would often claim that the car had left them in good order so that someone else must be responsible for the work being needed and that someone else should have to pay... then the paper chase would begin.
One thing all this taught me was that car examiners and conductors had extremely important jobs to do watching out for bad order cars being dumped on them at interchange points. They had to watch to protect their own company's costs, profit margin and their own wage packet.
So RIP tracks and very small car workshops are interesting... but I wanted to move up the scale a bit.
The works near me is fascinating. It gets everything from nuclear flasks to state-of-the-art passenger cars - via battered coil carriers and tank cars with no cladding on. The exotic bit is that, while one battered EWS 08 shunter gronks on forever, they keep trying out all sorts of other locos. One critter was running around with only one buffer on the end that did most of the work for months. They also have some interesting ways of coupling cars that don't have their full drawgear in place.
The car I haven't figured out is half an open... An interesting detail is that they use hoods from coil cars as open-ended sheds. I've seen other (German) hoods used at a different location. They make a change from containers.
All this, and an excess of interesting small locos in my collection, set me wondering about what similar facilities were like in the USA.
ericspdehusmanHere is a contract shop in Millard, NE. It does contract work on private cars and has done some work on ARMN reefers. It also repaired one of NMRA anniversary boxcars. The industrial lead was recently shortened to this point. It used to be call the "Old Main Line" because the track with the hoppers on it was originally the transcontinental main line of the UP. When they built the Lane Cutoff, it was downgraded to a branch. Ironically the local NMRA division meets in a Library that was built on the site of the Papillion depot and former UP main line. Its a nice size for a model railroad. You can post smaller links by highlighting some words, clicking on the link button, and making those words (or that word the link). That way, you do not have to scroll side to side to read the posts. I did that with your post. Here is a Bird's Eye View of the same shop.
Those are fantastic links! Thanks.
I spent a lot of last night following the different tracks around on both images/maps. The information there is incredible. Have you noticed that in some there are MoW machines working on all the main tracks so that various freights are tied down in the yards?
There's also a long string of gons up to the north west with strange cylinders on end in them. I'm wondering what on earth these would be?
The facility itself would take up all my available space and the ops would be almost all switching cars backwards and forwards (like at the plant near me) but I reckon that I could build a lead past a first tin shed into a theoretical works off scene.
I would guess that deliveries/collections of cars from the works in the links would be pretty much like those near me... In my case EWS "road" engines (37s, 60s, 66s and 67s that I've seen - that's a bit like a GP, two SDs and an F40PH) lead a train into the connecting spur, cut off and draw into the yard before backing into an empty road. Then the shunter [switcher] or critter hooks on and hauls the whole lot past. The road engine comes out and goes back into the connecting spur and then waits while the works loco shuffles the newcomers into different roads before dragging out any cars to go and shoving them onto the back of the road engine.
This sounds kind of a wrong way round but the road engine is at the least waiting for a pathway from the spur between frequent passenger trains and, I suspect, the driver may be taking a booked break to keep within his working hours.
I'm sure that I can work something similar using GPs and SDs from a Class 1 and assorted switchers for the works. I would be amazed if a US works like this didn't have a loco of its own as there is a lot of moving cars about to get them to different job sites in the works. Brakes seem to be done in one area, there is a definite tankcar cleanout facility and there are both paint and welding shops. A thing that surprises me is that the loco(s) rarely shift just the car that needs moving but usually shift a whole string. This is often in addition to or instead of one of the clusters of skeleton frames they use as barrier cars.
If I can't play with various switchers I'll just have to resort to the trackmobile. One useful detail with my works is that the loco always does the switching from the same end... which conveniently fits with the trackmobile only having one working coupler.
Someone else mentioned a transfer table. I'm not sure about using one for a model. In real life they are often worked in conjunction with capstans or car pushers. I have an arial view of my local works that appears to show a transfer table across the far (dead) end of all the big sheds but there is no sign of it now.
If I have a theoretical "rest of the works" off scene I might use a small traverser storage yard or a sector plate (same thing but pivoted at one end instead of sliding side-to-side... like half a turntable with several tracks on it). This would save the space needed for switches. I could probably put a large enough table into a disguising building...
One thing they have at my local works that I didn't notice in the links is a load gauge frame for ensuring that cars are within correct limits. The actual gauge plates are hinged and I notice that when any larger loco works through it the top plates get blown about by the exhaust.
One thing that would be entertaining to model - if I ever get that far - is that they changed the track layout taking out some switches... then they seemed to rediscover some nice big tankcars on the isolated track Instead of slewing the track for a temporary connection they called in a massive crane to lift them out. It's amazing how much one man leaning on a suspended 100ton tankcar can shift it around.
Thanks again everyone.
Any more good bits anyone?
Dave,
Here is an open sided car repair shop at the CSX yard at Hialeah, FL. Depending on how you flip the picture, the building was in the process of getting a new roof.
http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=n98qrv89bj8b&scene=35176588&lvl=2&sty=b
This photo shows the open ended car repair shop at the Florida East Coast rail yard approximately six kilometers south west from the above CSX operation.
http://www.bing.com/maps/?v=2&cp=n9462c896w4w&scene=35101334&lvl=2&sty=b
Dave-the-Train There's also a long string of gons up to the north west with strange cylinders on end in them. I'm wondering what on earth these would be?
Not sure if you are seeing the same thing, I haven't seen any cylinders in gons, but to the NE there is a long string of green UP MofW flat cars with concrete ties on them. Up near the Brandt truck and the MofW equipment.
There is a trainload of old wood ties up near Bob Boozer Drive and Pacific St. By the way, just north of Pacific St. is Pacific control point, with a pair of crossovers. The track north and west of Pacific is Rule 9.14 current of traffic and the track south and east of Pacific is CTC.
If you scroll down the main to the right you will find a small yard (102nd St and F St) and a very large industry that makes Kelloggs cereal. Down by 84th St are the two engines the local switcher uses and if you look closely you can find the caboose in the yard the local uses for shoving moves. Then down by 72nd St there is another industry support yard.
I followed the tracks all the out to Fremont and could not find any gondolas carrying cylinders.
at the time of the PC merger, the PRR at Rose Lake (E St Louis) had what they called a "spot shop". it was a big metal building with 2 tracks running through it. each track would hold a couple of regular length cars or one long one. cars were fed into the shop from yard track number 19 which was the designated bad order track. cars were pulled into and through the building with "rabbits" running between the rails. when repairs were completed the car was kicked out the other end of the building by the rabbit.
this operation was for light or running repairs only and all the heavy work was done at another location called the old rip where there were about 5 tracks all paved with concrete.
the great thing about this system was the tracks on the west end of the spot shop could be filled off number 19 about once every trick and the finished cars could be pulled off the tracks at the east end and reclassified in the east bound yard.
grizlump
Not sure how relevant this is, but I found this pic of the car shop in Owosso, MI, while I was digging up pics of TSBY 389. (the locomotive I'm currently obsessing over at the LHS)
Dave-the-TrainAny more good bits anyone?
Here's a bird's eye of Delta Tube in Holly, Michigan, served by CSX. They repair mostly autoracks, but you'll occasionally see box cars and various flats.
Here's a bird's eye of TTX in Waterford, Michigan, served by CN. They'll get various TTX cars in for repair.
And the car shops at CN's Pontiac Yard.
Here is now closed TTX shop in Mira Loma, CA (CalPro).
Thanks for all the brilliant help everyone.
Have a Great New Decade