06-28-2010, 04:28 PM
Small buildings like these are constructed over a concrete dock at door height to provide a place out of the weather where a forklift can operate reliably to load/unload boxcar/reefer traffic to/from trucks. These are designed as "pilot" structures to:
1.Entice new customers onto a shortline who after increasing their rail provided business, then build their own rail served facilities (production or warehouse or both) on either railroad or industrial park property. or they:
2. Can handle short time or "one shot" business not requiring a potential permanent structure often from a facility off line and too large to re-locate.
These structures are relatively in-expensive to build and are usually not intended for storage of product.
I have operated/managed shortlines where we did not even have the luxuary of such a structure or any other building but did all transloading of cars and maintaining of locomotives on the ground in all kinds of weather or used a portable ramp, pump or conveyor. When starting up a shortline, the emphasis is on spending your money to rehab track and using the simplest/least expensive methods to build additional business fast through transloading to supplement the existing customer base. Nice, new fancy buildings and spiffy, paint, jobs for locomotives/cabooses come later when (if ever) the company becomes profitable.
With this in mind I am often humored when modelers insist on building large modern structures for the customers on their layouts. Truth be told, many shortline customers have minimal facilities and many can be duplicated simply on a shelf layout. A spare track graded on both sides can handle scrap gons, flats of lumber/drywall, a location with catch pads between the rails and a small portable pump can handle tank car/covered hopper traffic, a simple pit under the rails with portable conveyer can handle aggregate, salt, minerals, and a portable dock/forklift can handle boxcar reefer business. Just some model ideas for facilities I have used in prototype operations.
Barry
1.Entice new customers onto a shortline who after increasing their rail provided business, then build their own rail served facilities (production or warehouse or both) on either railroad or industrial park property. or they:
2. Can handle short time or "one shot" business not requiring a potential permanent structure often from a facility off line and too large to re-locate.
These structures are relatively in-expensive to build and are usually not intended for storage of product.
I have operated/managed shortlines where we did not even have the luxuary of such a structure or any other building but did all transloading of cars and maintaining of locomotives on the ground in all kinds of weather or used a portable ramp, pump or conveyor. When starting up a shortline, the emphasis is on spending your money to rehab track and using the simplest/least expensive methods to build additional business fast through transloading to supplement the existing customer base. Nice, new fancy buildings and spiffy, paint, jobs for locomotives/cabooses come later when (if ever) the company becomes profitable.
With this in mind I am often humored when modelers insist on building large modern structures for the customers on their layouts. Truth be told, many shortline customers have minimal facilities and many can be duplicated simply on a shelf layout. A spare track graded on both sides can handle scrap gons, flats of lumber/drywall, a location with catch pads between the rails and a small portable pump can handle tank car/covered hopper traffic, a simple pit under the rails with portable conveyer can handle aggregate, salt, minerals, and a portable dock/forklift can handle boxcar reefer business. Just some model ideas for facilities I have used in prototype operations.
Barry