Not fictitious Tom. An example of what I am talking about would be the Southern's line through Franklin VA in the early 1900s, which can be confirmed in at least one Sanborn map. I find it financially questionable that railroads are going to keep their freight houses sufficiently staffed to quickly offload or load a car, not to mention extend the time a peddler freight takes to make its run, just so they don't have to spot a car on the station track...where they still have the further side through track that can be used to handle through traffic.
The reason I asked was unlike the situation where the freight, express and passenger depots were combined into one structure, with the freight house in a separate structure there might be room enough on the station track to load passengers and freight. With a car spotted at the freight house though the train would need to either back in or back out.
