On my there is an industry that makes pallets.There is a rail connection for wood chip collection. I had originally wanted lumber unloaded here until I realized that it might be a problem. A fork truck can only access the flat car from side and there is no room for any kind of crane. That left me with maybe a couple of possibilities-
1.Unload the lumber in the freight handling area and have trucked over or
2.Install some sort of inclines that the lumber can be off loaded onto(by hand) and then picked up by fork truck.
As far as I'm concerned both would work but I am leaning towards #2 so that the track could be used for more than one type of car(wood chip).
I'm including a photo of the area.Any suggestions or insight would be welcome. Bob

Add a ramp along side the track.
I remember seeing a thread where someone did that, but I can't seem to find it now.

Judging from the way that lumber is secured, we're looking at 1950s or before. I think if you have enough room to get a wagon or truck alongside, that's enough for a crew to unload the flat by hand.

Andrew

MasonJar Wrote:Judging from the way that lumber is secured, we're looking at 1950s or before. I think if you have enough room to get a wagon or truck alongside, that's enough for a crew to unload the flat by hand.

Like this:

http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/St...burgMI.htm (1920)

http://collections.mnhs.org/visualresour...geid=89028 (1928)

http://www.nps.gov/history/history/onlin...re10.4.jpg (1942)

Here is a link to a description of a whole small town built around a lumber mill, with an loading dock for planks along the track:
http://www.buffalocreekandgauley.com/STR...ndale.html

Smile,
Stein

Thanks for the replies.
88- I remember seeing something about ramps as well but I must have had a senior moment and can't remember where I saw it.
Andrew- The 50's it is.I will probably go with a ramp. The flat in the picture is on a track next to the pallet works. The lumber can be off loaded onto the ramp and then taken inside. The freight handling area also has an area for lumber. I have two photos to illustrate the pallet works track and freight area.




There is also a small building in the other side of the overpass that I can use for finished goods.

Stein-Those photos are great.Might be able to set some ideas from them.
As soon as I work something up I'll post some photos. Bob

Looks like you've got your answer. It's easy to forget (or to not realise if you weren't around at the time) that there was a lot of manual labour used right into the late '50s when it came to loading and unloading railway cars. Lumber is one commodity handled this way, but gondola-loads of coal or gravel were often unloaded by a couple of guys with shovels, and some ores, bagged or loose, were shipped in boxcars that had been loaded manually. Bagged sugar and flour loading and unloading, before the use of forklifts and pallets, was done by crews with strong backs, one bag at a time.

Wayne

doctorwayne Wrote:Looks like you've got your answer. It's easy to forget (or to not realise if you weren't around at the time) that there was a lot of manual labour used right into the late '50s when it came to loading and unloading railway cars. Lumber is one commodity handled this way, but gondola-loads of coal or gravel were often unloaded by a couple of guys with shovels, and some ores, bagged or loose, were shipped in boxcars that had been loaded manually. Bagged sugar and flour loading and unloading, before the use of forklifts and pallets, was done by crews with strong backs, one bag at a time.

Wayne

good point, Wayne. This thread reminds me of a photo:

<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://narrowgaugememories.com/v/Rio+Grande+in+the+60s/farmingtonsilverton/DRGWdgoloadinglumber9502.jpg.html">http://narrowgaugememories.com/v/Rio+Gr ... 2.jpg.html</a><!-- m -->

This may be a helpful photo, even though it is narrow gauge, and even though the lumber is being loaded into a boxcar. But the time frame is right, and it is being done by hand. I would imagine small industries during that time frame did a lot of loading and unloading by hand. All you really need is some kind of loading dock where the workers can be at the same level as our flatcar. Stack some lumber up on the platform with a few LPBs standing around, perhaps some kind of hand trolley, and you are all set.

doctorwayne Wrote:Looks like you've got your answer. It's easy to forget (or to not realise if you weren't around at the time) that there was a lot of manual labour used right into the late '50s when it came to loading and unloading railway cars. Lumber is one commodity handled this way, but gondola-loads of coal or gravel were often unloaded by a couple of guys with shovels, and some ores, bagged or loose, were shipped in boxcars that had been loaded manually. Bagged sugar and flour loading and unloading, before the use of forklifts and pallets, was done by crews with strong backs, one bag at a time.

Wayne

That reminds me of something I've read about the transshipment that used to happen at Depot Harbour, ON. I'll have to verify it, but it basically was the same as what Wayne is saying. I seem to recall that it took three guys to get the wheelbarrow up a ramp out of the ship to the dock. Once enough cargo was unloaded, it took the same three guys to stop the wheelbarrow running away as it went down the ramp to the dock...!

Andrew

Thanks everyone for the replies.Once again lots of useful information.
Kevin- Thanks for posting the photo. Might give me some ideas.
Wayne-I was born in '47 so I was too young to remember how those things were done.
I'll have to kick around some ideas and see what looks best.
Thanks again-Bob

1947 was a very good year for me, too, and, as outlined below, didn't make it hard for me to remember how those things were done.

Shortly after I started work at a steel plant, in 1966, there was a small lay-off. I was "lucky", with my 4 months seniority, to be transferred to another mill. While similar to my own mill, it was much older, with smaller equipment and smaller areas in which to work. It also lacked some of the mechanical niceties of the newer mill. I quickly learned that one of these areas was the mill basement, where scale from the ingot buggy was dumped. In the newer mill, the ingot buggy automatically dumped its scale into the mill "sewer", a flume for carry scale and scrap to a large pit, where it was loaded into gondolas by a crane with a clamshell bucket. In the older mill, the scale was dumped to the basement floor every time the buggy approached the roller line. The mills, of course, ran 24 hours a day, but in the older mill, the scale was removed from the basement only on dayshifts.
Enter greenhorn steelworker. Sent to the basement to work with two burly Italians who spoke almost no English, I quickly learned that the mechanical wheelbarrows used to haul the scale up a long ramp to where it was dumped into a waiting gondola were very difficult to control, especially when a person weighed only about 155 lbs. While the machines were called wheelbarrows, they were more like hand-guided dump trucks. I estimated their capacity, very conservatively, at 1,000 lbs.
After a couple of minor mishaps, and no apparent improvement in my driving skills, (a fear of losing my job was added incentive, too), I managed, with lots of sign language, to appoint myself "Head Shovel Technician". My two new "buddies", when they realised that their shovelling days were over, must've felt that they got a promotion, as, under our agreement, I shovelled, they drove.
To the casual observer, I got the worst of the deal: based on that conservative estimate of the wheelbarrows' capacity, I shovelled between 15 and 20 tons of scale every morning. Anyone who knew me, though, would have realised that after two summers in construction, shovelling sand, gravel, and cement, and toting concrete blocks made this job, if not child's play, at least nothing particularly difficult.
I kept my job, and was eventually transferred back to my own department, where, among many other jobs, I learned to operate that scale crane.

Wayne

Thanks for sharing that Wayne.I can remember starting to work in my fathers neon sign shop when I was 9.I was paid .50/hr to sweep the floor and do other odd jobs. As I got older I learned to do more. It was a good learning experience. Bob

I had many jobs before my career found me. First with me father packing and shipping schools supplies and let me add working with my father was the toughest of anything I ever had to do but I learned boy did I learn.Then came Gray Hound Bus Station in Chicago ,School while in school during the Holidays and summer from Raleigh NC going back to Chicago I worked for United Airlines (Loading and Unloading ,Load Planning,and Fueling ).After grad. from school there was nothing in my major (communacations Radio Television and Film ) and I was Married and one child on the ground and the airlines was going on strike on and off off and on.So there were openings in the Raleigh Firedepartment.

Never ever had I come close to doing anything like what they did nor did I dream that I could do what they did.Well the family had to eat so daddy had to work.Well to make a long story short I learned a lot of things .Along side my firefighting sisters and brothers we have saved quite a few lives and property along with my favority I am a Lt. that makes me a Driver Operater,yep you guessed it I drive a Fire Pumper .1500 GPM American Lafrance ,lights and sirens the works. I have been at it for 29 and a half years .It's getting ready to come to a close though . I've got about 1 more year and then I'm going to retire.I love that job but this old man can not keep up with the young bucks.

And my wife said she did not want the RFD to use me all up she wanted some for her.

And you no what .In my entire time I ahd been in the good ol RFD not one time did I ever rescue a cat out of a tree , A lady who had climbed on to here roof to do some gutter cleaning and was to scared to climb back down her ladder but no not one cat

Maybe one day I can tell you all some of the many many stories of things I faced during my career in the FIREDEPARTMENT and a lot of funny stuff to you may not beleave but they are true

Ho king i can beleave what youd tell me personaly as my uncle Joe was a member of a VFD and man i heard some weird stuff