Warehouse Companies

 On AIR 1 i modeled a couple warehouse’s. A rail served warehouse company is a large storage building that leases space to tenants. Along with the lease of space the tenant gets access to a rail siding and often equipment to load or unload your car, like fork trucks. Many warehouses also maintain a small fleet of trucks that, for a fee will move your product from the warehouse to your place of business. Warehouses lease space to any business that needs the extra storage space, either long term or short. 

The list of tenants is as varied as business itself. My friend Jon Cure sent me a map of all the tracks and rail served businesses in greater Los Angeles circa 1925. It is an astounding map, but there are a couple features Germaine to my current discussion. The map lists a warehouse, the Overland Terminal Warehouse Company with 89 different tenants.

So how did I operate my version of the Overland Terminal Warehouse (OT), and how do I plan to operate warehouses on AIR2?

On AIR1 I billed cars to the business name  in “Care of the Overland Terminal Warehouse Co.”. That simple. My model of the OT warehouse was huge, 4’ (48”) long with a bunch of loading doors and space for at least twelve cars. 

ANY car type can be billed to a warehouse company, though tank cars are a stretch. On AIR 2 I plan several warehouses. One particular is the “Weisman Bros. Terminal Warehouse Co. and Freight Consolidators”.

This warehouse will have a regular loading dock for the warehouse, a cold storage warehouse,  and another loading dock for boxcars of consolidated freight. 

A freight consolidator is a company that transports LCL. It is in direct competition with the railroad in this business, but railroads encouraged them because they wanted out of the retail end of LCL freight. A freight consolidator will collect packages for destinations it serves, put them all together in one boxcar, charge the customer regular LCL rates, and get a carload rate from the railroad to move the boxcar.

On AIR2 the switch job will only be spotting or pulling  cars as per Waybills designating door spot: either warehouse, cold storage, or freight consolidator. There currently is no plan to creat any procedures other that just way billing cars to and pulling cars from this industry.

But the benefit of this industry is it generates a lot of car loadings, it can receive many different car types, and it’s fairly unique as far as model railroads go.

Do you have a warehouse or two on your layout? Do you bill cars to multiple business “In care of” the warehouse company? What about a cold room? Have you considered adding a cold storage feature to your warehouse?

I’m interested in how you operate your warehouse industries!

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