jecorbettI had always figured that mail and express would be delivered to the depot because those normally were shipped on passenger trains but I had always assumed LCL would be delivered to a stand alone freight house near the depot.
There are so many variables. Your Sears refrigerator may have been unloaded from the local passenger train baggage car or mixed freight combine while your new RCA TV came by LCL and was unloaded at the freight house.
If there was only 2-3 pieces of freight then it arrived by baggage car or combine instead of being a part of a larger LCL shipment. If there was lots of LCL freight then a boxcar would be used and would be unloaded at the freight house.By prearrangement you could meet the mixed train at a road crossing for unloading your shipment onto your pickup truck.
Now,if Vent's Lumber Company received a half a car load of kitchen cabinets the car could be unloaded on the team track or at the freight house by request. This would not be LCL since the load is cosigned to Vent's.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Well, LCL, team tracks, and freight houses aren't all doing the same thing. A team track is for businesses that receive periodic rail shipments, but don't have their own spur track or siding. Normally they would get at least one entire railcar's worth of freight.
Freight houses would be used more to hold items until they were picked up by the business (unlike a team track, where the business unloads the freight directly into a truck or wagon with a team of horses). A freight car spotted at the freight house might have freight for several businesses that were located near that station, so it might be a full boxcar but with shipments for 3 or 4 businesses.
A town that didn't get a lot of freight might have LCL delivered by a freight or passenger train without using a sidetrack or spur. A baggage car (or baggage section of a combine) might have a few packages of items that would be unloaded at the passenger station while the train was sitting there at it's station stop.
So I guess it's up to you as far as how big an area your two cities serve. If there's enough people in the surrounding area, a team track / freight house might make sense. Remember, that small town might be the only train stop in many miles, and many people might use it for picking up stuff.
I have been reading the new Kalmbach book Express, Mail, and Merchandise Service and have learned quite a bit from it. One thing that I was unaware of is that in small towns, the combination depot would receive express, mail, and LCL shipments. I had always figured that mail and express would be delivered to the depot because those normally were shipped on passenger trains but I had always assumed LCL would be delivered to a stand alone freight house near the depot.
The reason this is of concern to me is that I am currently constructing a branch line off my mainline with two town along the branch. I had planned to have a seperate freight house with team track in each town to be used as a universal industry. Now I'm wondering if I should have a seperate freight house in these small towns. The branch is to be served by a mixed train which travels in both directions each day. Would the LCL shipments on such an operation be unloaded during a station stop at the depot or would it be more likely to spot the car at a freight house for loading and unloading. This only impacts the intermediate town since at the end of the line the passengers could disembark before the LCL is unloaded. I'm thinking that at the intermediate stop, there would be other switching to do as well and the LCL could be unloaded on the house track while other industries in the town are switched. Would this be the norm on a branchline mixed train operation.
Next question. If I decide to unload the LCL at the depot, what am I going to do with the two freighthouse kits I already bought?