CSX Deland Spur, FL

[FCIN]

Going back to the pic of the Transload shed at DeLand, I'm now thinking that such a structure would perfectly fit on the team track at Palmetto. However, I am wondering how the structure would look from the trackside? Presumably, it would be open with piping/apparatus to discharge the plastic pellets from a hopper car into a truck. Also, it difficult to see on Google but it looks the roof of the structure provides cover for a truck whilst loading is proceeding.

Can anyone help, or provide pics of similar structures?

Thanks again,

Mal

Mal;
The photos of this very simple trans-load shed have really peaked my interest and I've been looking at this quite a bit using Google/Bing and studying the photos you found. From what I can make out, I'd say that the track side of this structure is completely (or perhaps partially) open, with only small pipe like supports and bracing for the roof. You can tell what I mean by looking at the right side of the structure:     The really odd thing about this facility is that there appears to be only the single unloading pipe that runs over the top of the shed as you can see here - an interesting modeling detail in itself:     I can't see any evidence of there being an unloading pipe running parallel to the track, which would allow the consignee to connect and unload more than one car at a time. That's the usual procedure at most all of the plastics facilities that I've seen.

They no doubt have a connecting hose that is long enough to allow connecting to all the hoppers on the car, but that begs the question, how are they moving the cars if they need to unload more than one car between the times that the CSX local works the facility? With as many cars as you see waiting to be unloaded, it really bothers me that they seem to be able to only unload a single car per day. I suppose they could let gravity move a car or two down toward the switch to access additional cars, but still looks like they would be very limited as to the number of cars they could unload in a days time.

Still, it would make for a very interesting small footprint structure on a team/trans-load track on a switching layout, not to mention an unusual looking structure. It could certainly represent the trans-load facility for a small off-line plastics plant that only receives a car now and then. I know of one small plastics plant in Madison, IN, on the CMPA (Meese Orbitron Dunne Co http://www.meeseinc.com/), that receives only one or two cars of plastics pellets per week. So no reason that you couldn't have a similar off-line facility.