Train car movement on an industrial siding, back between 1950-65???

Some companies had their own  small track units that could handle a few cars. However a truck (tractor)  and chain could move a car very easily with the handbrake  off . Unless a really" hot" move most  probably waited for the train crew later in the day or next day.

Many creative solutions.

If the siding is on a slight grade, gravity could be used to move the cars. Just release the brake and let them roll ahead/back slowly until the next car lined up.

Maybe some used a winch?

I worked for a mining company years ago and one of our sites in New Mexico had been opened in the late 1940's.  We used what the site guys referred to as a "mule" to advance cars into and through the unloading area.  Essentially this was a track mounted sled attached to a cable between the rails that was then attached to a winch at the end of the loading tracks.  When one car was loaded and the loader wanted to spot another for loading, he'd start up the winch and have the mule shove the next car under the spout.   As memory serves, the mule could move somewhere between 20-25 loaded cars.  The mine had two loading tracks with a mule on each one.  When Santa Fe set empties into the mine, they'd shove them all the way down each track with the car closest to the engine in each cut positioned under the loading spouts.  The mules would handle all subsequent positioning of empties for loading.

Curt

I worked for many years at Ashland Oil's Catlettsburg Refinery. The C&O/CSX Main Line South to Tennessee, passed by our complex. We had a nice yard there, with Tank/Hopper Car loading/unloading facilities. We also had a repair, and car cleaning site, at the far south end of the refinery.

The railroad would bring empty/loaded cars to the refinery. Then spot the cars for processing, when ready, they would make up their return train back to Russell, Ky Yards. Until about 6-8 years ago this was handled by CSX only.

Sometimes there would be new process equipment brought in by rail for maintenance dept, or construction groups.

There was a time in the mid 80's where catalyst and limestone dust was brought into one of the units, that had an off site silo operation, and they used a Track Mobile, to move the loaded, unloaded cars in and out for processing. New Technology eliminated this operation altogether.

CSX turned this full time switching operation over to R.J. Corman Co, as the new modern thinking is, the railroads want to run from point A > B, and thus eliminating the old "Local Freight" runs. 

  So this is the reason so many "Short Line Railroads" have come into being.

Now if a spot was missed, and we could catch the crews before they left, we could get them to respot these these cars, if not, we would have our loaders manually move these cars on spot. We had what was called a "Car Jack", and this was used with success for many years.

Down side, it was by the luck of the Good Lord, that someone didn't get maimed or even killed, as the tracks on these loading racks, were anything but level, and to move one, you had to of course loosen the brakes to get them to move, sometimes it took several guys to do this operation. 

The Railroad would charge $200.00+ per car to respot, unless it was their fault. I was responsible for that operation for a number of years, and bought my guys a couple of Loaded 18" Pizza's on a weekly basis, and I would always get some for the Railroad Crews.

The Company never got charged for respots when I was minding the store!

The guy that replaced me said that "Kindness Showed Weakness", and stopped the "Creature Comforts Altogether".   I guess a difference in management Philosophies Ya Think?......................Probably way more than what you wanted, but that's the way we did it!..................................Brandy! 

Brandy:

You and I must have attended the same "school".  ��

When I worked at production sites, I always "took care of" the railroad crews who switched us.  A little courtesy goes a long way when you need to get problems fixed.

I'd take our regular local crews and their wives out to dinner three or four times each year and they were always remembered on their birthdays and at Christmas.

Curt

Another item that's used (and I don't see modeled a lot) is a winch/capstan. A cable (or a stout rope) is connected to the end of the car(s) and looped around the capstan and the cars are winched (or even pulled manually) into position. In many cases, there are multiple capstains so cars can be moved in both directions. I think the ones at a tank car loading spur in San Pedro are still in place. If so, I'll take photos next time I'm in the area.

Yes, Matt, I forgot about the "Old Man", that we used to load Flaked Pitch into 100 ton hopper cars. My loader would attach the cable, then start loading the flaked pitch on a conveyor system into the car. Then would use the winch, to slowly drag the car forward, until it was loaded............

The NYS&W would send  an engine to drill and spot the cars where they needed to be. This usually happened when the local was out doing it's daily work in the am and pm.

Thanks guys.

I can't imagine having the RR send out a loco every time a car had to be spotted under a downspout or in front of a door as each car got loaded/unloaded, especially a job that took days to complete.

Matt, please do take some photos, I think I know what you're talking about when you say capstans.

It's funny, the machine shop where I worked as a draftsman (1970s) had a track running behind the building, but I never recall seeing but 1 or 2 cars ever being moved back there, even though there was a lot of train activity on the line that ran in front of the building from Norfolk to Va. Beach.

Hmmm..... brings back memories of bygone days.

Dad had a grain elevator in southwest Nebraska on the CB&Q Hi-line. The tri-weekly would come in and set out a string of box cars to be loaded with grain, either by us or by the co-op. We knew the exact spot where the car had to stop and would throw a 2X4 across the track at that point. Then using a pinch bar (perhaps the car jack mentioned above) would get it rolling down the slight incline until it hit the 2X4 where it would stop, practically destroying the wood in the process. After the car was coopered and loaded Dad would uncouple the thing (we could get about 3 cars on our side of the street, the rest being on the Co-ops side of the street) and my job was to climb up on top while he got it rolling so I could set the brake further on down the siding. Then we would repeat the process again for the next car. The Co-op had an old Farmall M that we would use to bring another batch of cars across the street when the first batch was loaded and moved down the siding. The brake was only set on the first car down the siding and after that we would just get the other cars moving and it would bash into the next car and stop.

On one occasion I had to go quite a ways down the siding with the first car because I had to make room for several other cars.  When I went to set the brake I was surprised when the wheel just spun around and accomplished nothing - chain was disconnected. So I had in interesting ride down the siding, through a switch onto the main line and about 3/4 of a mile outside of town. I think I started helping Dad when I was probably about 10 or 11 years old and continued until I left that part of the country for good.

Many years later I worked at Far-Mar-Co in their elevator in north Denver next to the Hungarian Mills. The era of coopering and loading boxes was now ancient history and everything was done in hoppers. They had a trackmobile that would move about 6 cars at a time up to be loaded. The brake was set on the very end car and a cable attached to it. Then the whole string would be pulled into the right position for loading of each car. Interesting work when it was snowing, 10 degree temp and a 40 MPH wind.

An edit here: In case you're wondering what I meant by a pinch bar, here it is...... http://www.rrtoolsnsolutions.c...ailroadCarMovers.asp

There are industries in my area that use a variety of methods. All the car-movers and capstans that put people directly in harm's way have been disappearing. Where small switchers aren't economical, front-end loaders fitted with a knuckle coupler seem to be popular.

Here's the mathematical explanation of a capstan roller. Basically, it's a horizontal pulley with multiple wrappings of cable. Hopefully the capstans are still on that spur and I'll take photos Saturday on the way to the club.

Tripleo's probably got the cheapest method, good bit of history there too!

So, a piece of iron on a pole and a strong back was all that was needed.

I wonder when they started using/making specialized vehicles to move the cars?  I doubt some out of the way place, like a lone grain elevator in Nebraska, ever got the high-end stuff such as a powered railcar mover, unless they made one themselves using a farm tractor.

Hey, that might be a cool piece to have, a farm tractor with a knuckle on the front.

Matt, I've seen them use ropes and capstans (and a transit for aligning purposes) at Norfolk Naval Shipyard when bringing ships into drydock, I guess if they miss placing the ship on the big wooden blocks, it would not be a good thing.

Some industries use a front end loader to move cars around, either pulling them with a chain, or pushing against them.  We always did especially careful inspections on cars picked up at those industries, because their employees use grab irons, end braces, anything but the coupler, to attach the chain, or to push against.  We fixed the cars before picking them up, and charged them for repairs to the cars.  Most of them just kept damaging the cars and paying for the repairs.

Gentlepeople,

The following film shows a pinch bar in action at about the 8:30 mark, followed by the car rolling and being stopped by the hand brake.  Watch the whole thing to see how a grain elevator works.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/grain_elevator

ChipR

Thanks ChipR   I especially liked the 1-man elevator!!!

Man, I'd be wearing a mask if I had to do that type of work, a person could choke to death on all that dust.

The pinch bar is shown at 14:00 also, where he moves the car out and let's her slam into another one.  I don't feel so bad now when I slam 2 cars together

On the Providence and Worcester they drop off loaded stone cars at the Tilcon plant on the NE Corridor in Northern CT. The cars are then moved with an under the track pulley system so the are positioned over the drop site where the material then gets brought up to the conveyor. The limit in this location is (I believe) 20 cars on that siding.

When switching out the Dow Chemical Plant on the CT River, Dow uses a Trackmobile to spot cars after we left. I never did like working the Dow plant - LOTS of nasty stuff being moved around and  a steep grade from the mainline to get to their plant.

Paul

Thanks for the video. I wonder when it was filmed - I don't know of any elevators that small still in operation. A scale model of that one would certainly be at home on a 1960's and earlier layout. The capacity of today's elevators, even the country ones, is measured in millions of bushels, not thousands. The elevator that Dad ran had a storage capacity of 155,00 bushels in the main facility and two annexes of 145,00 and 260,000 bushels. That was over 50 years ago and it wasn't considered a large elevator, even at that time. The current elevator in Anton (population 13) has a capacity of 1,900,000 bushels and they will run out of space during wheat harvest.

I sure wish someone would do some railcars in some of the smaller companies to grace our layouts, keeping in mind that the demand probably isn't there. I don't think I've ever seen an O scale Far-Mar-Co or Scoular car from back in the day. What I would really like, though, is a couple of these to pull behind a Burlington engine:

http://freight.railfan.ca/cgi-...=tldx9047&o=ptlx

During my college years I worked for American Can Co during the summers.  They had 4 loading tracks, each with about 12 loading points.  The equipment to load the cars with cans, bulk on paper in the car, required the car to be located, pretty exactly in front of each dock, and the Milwaukee Road, which serviced the factory, wasn't able to precisely locate each car, we had a bunch of "car jacks" which we would use to accurately position the car.  These "car jacks" (which were not used for lifting the car) consisted of a cast assembly, at the bottom of a pole which you slid in between the wheel and the rail and had a small lever that would push against the rail and the wheel and actually move the car a few inches.  There was a long, heavy wooden handle on the device to give you enough leverage to move the car.  Cars could be moved several feet by using this device.

A few years ago, one of these car jacks came up at an auction of railroadiana and no one else recognized what the device was for.  I ended up buying it for $5 bucks and have it proudly on display in my basement.  Most of my RR buddies had never seen one of these.

Paul Fischer

We had both a front end loader with a coupler and a Trackmobile for our pulverized coal boiler plant. When Dad was working in the Air Room at Shaffer's Crossing, they had a Case tractor they used to move units around with.

What do they do today that is different than back in the day??

Here's what's made these days; 

https://www.aldonco.com/store/...Rail-Car-Movers.aspx

http://www.carpuller.com/capst...ail-car-pullers.html

When it comes to locomotive-less car moving, I believe it's the last bastion of Fred Flintstone devices. If you can think something up, it's probably been done   Capstans, winches, farm tractors with bumpers on them, you name it, it's been tried - horses included.

Here's a model railroader's eye view:  https://atsfinroswell.wordpress.com/2014/09/

While searching for something else this morning I ran across this wheel jack:

and this:

I made a couple of these wheel stops a while back because I have a couple of sidings with slight grades where my cars want to wander.