Team track

[Wlal13again]

I had an odd space on the corner of my layout. After some thought, I struck me that it would be a good spot for team track. What could we be unloading from flat cars and box cars in Pennsylvania circa 1985?

[3rdrail]

Almost anything. The most common item on flat cars would be farm implements, but lumber could come that way too, especially bulkhead flats. Boxcars could hold almost anything a local store would buy, or it might be newsprint for the local paper.

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Good call!

You can also use other car types as well, covered hoppers with pneumatic unloading, tank cars (think corn syrup tankers), etc...

[GonzoCRFan]

Rich,

What I would do is kinda account for all the different types of carload traffic the actual industries on your layout will generate, and then pick something completely different as the basis for the team track.

There is a company in Boyertown, PA called Drug Plastics. They make those small brown prescription bottles. They receive plastic pellets through a team track a few miles through their plant. There is a branch line that heads north from the NS Harrisburg line just west of Pottstown; I think it's owned by the East Penn Railway. They use a former PB&NE SW1 to haul pellet hoppers north to an empty lot in town, where the pellets are transloaded into dry bulk trucks for the final haul to their plant.

[wm3798]

Here on the shore we have some active team tracks.  In Cambridge I've seen agricultural products come in  in covered hoppers, I believe they're either feed additives or fertilizers of some sort.  They're transloaded into trucks then carried out to the end user.

Lee

[Allentown Hump]

Brick. There's a team ramp up at Lewiston Jct. in Maine that I sort of want to replicate that gets DD Box Cars full of brick. You can add a little complexity to the operations by sending box cars that have "Unload This Side Only" noted on the door opposite of the ramp. Guilford LOVES to do that!

[Wlal13again]

Thanks guys. all great suggestions. In my profession I get to spend a lot of time in and around industrial areas. Now I`m on the look out to see how all of your ideas are set up in the 1/1 world...

[SAH]

I'm late to the topic, as usual.   :

Here are some photos of a bulk unload truck to rail team track.  Always wanted to model this set-up.  Pretty simple but would be an eye catcher I think.







Here's an even simpler one.


Steve

[Mark5]

I worked at a warehouse in Rockville, MD in the late 1970s. Usually deliveries were by truck, but one fine day we were told to bring our trucks up to a siding to unload a boxcar full of stuff to take back to the warehouse. ;D It was just a siding. Don't think it is there anymore.

[3rdrail]

The original question was about boxcar and flatcar traffic at team tracks. Now, we had a team track across from the county courthouse and public library in Port St. Joe. Raffield Fisheries occasionally loaded mechanical reefers with fish parts for pet food when his credit was cut off by the truckers. Now, as far as covered hoppers go, we had the wildest intermodal transfer of all on that team track...

There was a two tie wide pit under the track where a conveyor fit and fertilizer came in loaded in covered hoppers to fertilizer the pine woodlands of the paper company. This was done with a helicopter with a large bin attached on each side. It would land beside the conveyor, load one bin, get airborne, turn around and load the second, then fly off to the woodlands. Quite an operation, but I could kick myself for never photographing it. 

[Allentown Hump]

Here's an even simpler one.


Steve

Hey Steve,

Is there a pit anywhere on this spur? I'm tempted to try something like in the photo you posted.

[SAH]

Hey Steve,

Is there a pit anywhere on this spur? I'm tempted to try something like in the photo you posted.

I don't believe so but am not 100% certain.  In the hi res photo it looks like there is a belt extension that can be located directly under the chute.  I don't believe there is a way to move the cars  (winch, trackmobile, front end loader etc.) on-site either, which would support the "no pit" theory.  I've never seen it in operation though so a mobile mover of some sort may show up when it is.

Steve

[3rdrail]

Steve, there are one man car movers that look like a large automobile jack - they are placed under one wheel and pumped, moving the car a few inches, this is repeated to move the car further. You can move a car ten feet in about 15 minutes, enough for one man to move a different outlet over a pit. These fit in the back of a pickup.

[Ian MacMillan]

You can do what Boston Sand and Gravel does.....Push them with a bucket loader... Man do they do some damage to those cars. Saw some pretty banged up in Boston. Jamie has worked the train several times and they are pretty bad.

[Allentown Hump]

Hey Steve,

Is there a pit anywhere on this spur? I'm tempted to try something like in the photo you posted.

I don't believe so but am not 100% certain.  In the hi res photo it looks like there is a belt extension that can be located directly under the chute.  I don't believe there is a way to move the cars  (winch, trackmobile, front end loader etc.) on-site either, which would support the "no pit" theory.  I've never seen it in operation though so a mobile mover of some sort may show up when it is.

Steve

Thanks!