I am working on a layout that has an industrial siding that is going to be within the building. The question is what sort of an industry to make this.
I remember one such place in St. Louis just to the Southeast of the Inter belt & Brown interchange. I just don't remember what it was. I saw another in downtown Omaha (11th & Dodge?) but the industry that had required it had long since moved or gone out of business.
I would like a brainstorm of the industries that people can think of that would need a siding inside the building.
I can give you three examples in Philadelphia that I have seen. The former Philco plant at D and Tioga Streets had two inside loading tracks served by the PRR. Philco made radios and television receivers, so protection from the weather was probably a consideration.
On the other hand, the huge Budd Company plant at Fox and Hunting Park Avenues had at least two indoor sidings in different areas of the plant, served by the Reading. This plant made automobile body panels, so protection from the weather was a convienence but probably not essential.
There was also a lumber comany in southwest Phila that not only had an inside loading track, but the track continued thru the building to serve another industry. Switch crews had to pull cars out of the building to switch the industry behind it. This was on the PRR.
And finally, in New York City there used to be an entire elevated freight belt line (NYC, now gone) down the west side of Manhattan that ran right thru all the buildings for many blocks whether they had sidings or not.
The Dayton Tire plant in Dayton, Ohio (go figure!) has an interior siding... but you're talking a BIG building, even if compressed. The plant is right along I-75 ... and I measured it once at 1/4 mile long along the track, and appears to be roughly square. In N scale that's just over 8 feet long...
The siding runs the entire length of the building (doors on both ends, bumper just outside the north end). The GM truck plant just north of there also has an interior siding... appears to be mostly for offloading parts and subassemblies. Trucks are loaded onto autoracks outside the plant.
Modern paper plants or major paper users (newspapers) might be another option. They would probably have at least covered loading docks, and in perpetually rainy areas might actually have inside loading.
In the 70's General Mills had a warehouse with two sets of two tracks inside - could load cars side by side - capacity of 40 cars, I think. Lots of traffic - perhaps something on a smaller scale food processing plant.
The Kimberly-Clark plant in Fullerton, CA, which made Kleenex and toilet paper I believe, had an interior siding. I suspect they were bringing in paper for manufacturing and shipping out end products. I worked for 5 months in the hot strip mill at California Steel in Fontana, CA. There was a siding near the furnaces at one end of the building and another siding near the middle where the coilers were. Flat cars and gonolas were spotted here to receive scrap from overhead cranes when there was a failure of the process. I've been in a number of other metal-working facilities which also had interior railcar sidings to deliver or pickup sheet or slab metal of one type or another. Again, extensive use of overhead cranes.
I worked at American Steel & Wire north of Waukegan in the late '50s. They had a siding in the building that ran right behind our data processing offices. We had to hold the punched cards in the sorter racks or they'd vibrate out every time a train went by :-).
IIRC, it was mostly gondolas coming in empty and going out with coils.
When I was a switchman in the 60s, we had a grocery store warehouse with a track the length of the building inside along one wall.
But the industries I liked the most for modeling were steel fabrication firms. One was Chicago Bridge & Iron and another was called Eimco Filters; there were others. Eimco manufactured large industrial filter machinery that was often too large to ship by truck.
CB&I fabricated water tanks (for community water supplies) and refinery storage tanks and such. They had a track outside the building in a structural steel yard that was enclosed by a fence and had an overhead crane for unloading structural steel and plate from gondolas and flats. Two other tracks ran inside the building next to the fabrication floor. The fabricated tanks were loaded onto empty flats taken into the building. So, one industrial site had three sidings--nice for operations.
It appears the local bomb manufacturing company might have tracks that run inside. The Plant is in northeast Dallas. Maybe some who is more familiar with the facility can say for sure. Wouldn't want anyone to see our WMDs now would we?
Some large commercial printers might also receive large rolls of paper at inside platforms or at least have them semi enclosed. Bruce
Hmmm, well the first thing that comes to mind for me is Avalon Rail in West Allis, WI. Avalon provides services to private railcar owners, storage and repairs. There is another building in the same industrial (the old Allis-Chalmers plant) that takes cars inside, but I haven't noticed the name or what they do there.
I am a conductor/brakeman for Norfolk Southern. We have many industries that have tracks that run inside buildings. Let me give you a few examples...
General Motors Automobile Assembly Plant in Doraville, GA has 5 tracks that all go inside their building. Track 1 has 3 spot locatons inside the building. Tracks 2 through 4 have 4 spot locations inside on each, while Track 5 has 10 spots. Spot locations mean you can spot that number of cars total on the track. They don't always order in a "full setup", but are capable of it. A full setup at this plant would be over 25 cars indoors. All the tracks except Track 5 also have a couple of spot locations outside the building, but it is very rare that they ever order anything on those spots. GM receives mostly double door 60' boxcars, generally hi-cube cars, but also standard height cars. On Track 1 they mostly receive 50' single door cars, usually Railbox lettered cars full of tires.
Wrigley Chewing Gum company in Flowery Branch, GA has two tracks that run inside their building. They get tank cars with corn sweetener and covered hoppers full of sugar.
Glidden Paint company in Oakwood, GA also has two tracks that run inside their building. They get tank cars of various liquid chemicals and covered hoppers of pigment, talc and other powdery chemicals.
J.M. Tull steel manufacturers in Duluth, Ga get coil-cushion cars with rolls of steel on them inside their building. You can spot 5 cars inside the building. You can also shove a few through the building, out the back door for storage purposes as well.
As an interesting side-note, before I went to work for the railroad...I always considered these cars to be a type of flat car...but the AAR (American Association of Railroads) designates these cars with an AAR "E" code, which is the same code as a Gondola. These are the cars that resemble a flat car with the "hoods" that cover the coiled rolls of steel, if you're wondering.
Ameristeel, another steel manufacturer also in Duluth, GA, gets steel rebar both in standard 100-ton Gondolas and on Bulkhead Flat cars. I have also seen them get sheets of steel on occasion on flat cars of various description, mostly bulkhead flats. You can spot 4 regular
100-ton gons inside their building. They also have about 2 cars worth of room out the back door of the building on the other side.
Inland Paper in Doraville doesn't have a fully enclosed rail unloading facility, but it does have a completely covered unloading area, with steel supports toward the outside. That track holds 10 regular 50' boxcars.
Quebecor, also in Doraville, gets empty box cars for loading as well as loaded boxcars of paper scrap, inside their building. I haven't been in this industry in awhile, but I remember that they have a second door inside the building, and you shove either empties or loads behind that second door, and the other goes behind the first door. I think it's loads up front, but don't quote me on that.
Georgia Pacific Container has two tracks. One outside and one inside. The outside track gets tank cars full of wax. (They make wax coated boxes in this plant). The inside track is for boxcars, both single and double door variety loaded with rolls of paper. You can spot 4 cars inside the building, and two outside next to the loading dock. Sometimes extra cars are left on the tank car track for storage purposes.
J. M. Huber in Commerce, GA has a track that runs inside their building. At the rear of the track are two spots for tank cars. They get some kind of chemicals for pressure treating lumber and wood products. There is also about 2 cars worth of room outside the back of the building where additional tank cars are sometimes stored, or empties are shoved out back and new loads shoved to the two spot locations. Depends on how convenient it is to pull the empty tanks when the crew is switching the industry. Sometimes they prefer to pick the empties up at a later date. The rest of the track holds about 9 or 10 boxcars, depending on length. I have seen both single and double door cars inside this building. They generally receive empties and load particle board and waferboard into them. On occasion I have seen a loaded box car go into this plant, but am not sure exactly what was inside.
I have not been to any of the other industries down the Commerce branch since I first trained on the railroad, because the branchline was sold off below Commerce to a shortline, but I seem to recall that a company called Dairy-Pak that makes milk cartons had part of their track inside the building. They receive box cars of paper products. There was another company called AB&B who make power transformers for the electric utility companies. They received chemicals in tank cars, acids and so forth. I believe they may have had an indoor spotting location as well.
There is a steel place up near Gainesville that has a track that runs indoors, but that's one industry that I've never personally worked. I have seen gons hanging out on the track leading up to the door, however. Likewise there is another metal works near Suwanee that has a similar setup. There is also one up near Norcross that not only had several tracks that ran inside, but some outside, and had a "loop" that ran around the entire building and connected back into the lead track. You could literally turn a train around there. That industry stopped receiving cars before I began working with NS.
A company called Johnson Control has locations on our line in Cornelia, GA and in Seneca, SC (actually closer to Walhalla than Seneca). Best as I recall, both places have tracks that run inside their buildilngs. I'm not entirely sure what the Seneca plant does, but the Cornelia plant was making remote control switcher engines for industrial purposes. I recall going into that plant once to pick up a small remote control engine and taking it back to Gainesville, Ga to be lined up for one of the outbound trains that went to either Birmingham, AL or Chattanooga, TN...I forget which.
We used to serve the Atlanta Journal/Constitution Newspaper, which had a track that ran indoors, but that track was spiked and tagged "out of service" a few years before I came to work for the railroad. I can imagine they probably received boxcars with paper, and possibly tank cars or covered hoppers with some type of pigment, dyes or inks. I don't know for sure, as I've never asked anyone exactly what type of cars they received.
I'm sure I've forgotten a couple of places, but this should help give you an idea of what you could model.
There are plenty of other types of industries that could use a setup like this. I recall once seeing a photo of the Coors Brewery in Colorado, which had a number of tracks inside a large enclosed building.
Another idea is that the business didn't need the track enclosed, but just grew the business around/over the tracks. That's what happened at the flour mill my father worked at. Originally the tracks were just a side load platform, double track, and used gang plates to reach the cars on the second line. When they added a rye mill, it went on the other side of the tracks. Later offices, labs, etc were built in the space bettween the buildings above the tracks. End result was 'enclosed' tracks.
So if you had any industry, build with a few different styles of building and you can have the same result.
Many of the auto plants in the area (Michigan) have, or had, multiple enclosed sidings for loading/unloading. This includes both assembly and parts plants. Some even had the scrap gons loaded inside.
Stora Forest Industries in Nova Scotia, Canada has enclosed loading for newsprint rolls, and supercalendared paper for magazines. Mostly in 50' high cube plug-door boxes.
Clarke Transport in Brockville, Ontario: seems to be a road/rail transloading facility. Single siding leaves the main just near the VIA station, and disappears into the building; looks long enough for maybe four boxcars. On the street side there are truck docks and office windows. The building itself is made of sky-blue ribbed metal
-- could probably be scratchbuilt with Pikestuff(?) siding.
East on Greenfield to 70th St. Make a left, go to the 2nd light, make a right. Go to the end of the street, make a left. Avalon is the building furthest back in on the NE corner. If you see an Allis-Chalmers Thrall well car at the east end of the street you're in the right place. There was all kinds of passenger stuff stacked up there last winter.
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