Freight House Operations: Transfer Freight House to Off-Layout Destinations

 A Transfer Freight House (TFH) is a facility railroads built at major junctions where LCL packages are re-sorted to forward them on their way to their final destinations.

I plan to model one on my next layout. It will have 48 doors or spots, so it will have a 48 car capacity.

Each door will, ROUGHLY, correspond to a different off layout destination. Some destinations will have more doors assigned to them than others. I initially planned to have 12 off-layout destinations divided amount the 48 doors.

Each track at the TFH will be organized in such a way that when pulled, the cars are blocked for easy classification and connections with other expedited LCL trains.

Railroads generally moved LCL from FH to FH, resorting as they went until the package EVENTUALLY reached a destination where its Consignee could either pick it up or the package could easily be delivered to their door. This is not to say that railroads did not load an entire car with LCL packages for one city. A sealed through LCL car was common, but this type of car has less, little, play value for our LCL game.

Additionally it is unlikely that Littlerock, WV would load one entire boxcar for Chicago,  the transfer house MIGHT, but more likely cars loaded at Littlerock would be forwarded to another transfer house in the direction of Chicago, probably in care of another railroad.

So if I divided my TFH into 12 destinations what is the best way for me to do that? Obviously I need to research potential connections (Which I have), probably grouping them for selective compression reasons. 

In the world of LCL of the steam era the two greatest hubs are Chicago and New York, neither of which the AIR connects with directly. So at my TFH do I have doors labeled New York or, because on the AIR we interchange freight for the Northeast USA with the Western Maryland, the doors are labeled WM?

So let’s assume I want to forward freight to: Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Wilmington/Philadelphia, Newark, New York, and Boston. All the cars for these destinations must go via the WM first, so for added play value should I label the doors: WM PITTSBURGH, etc?

Chicago is another of these major destinations that we ship to, but are beyond AIR rails. In that direction we have for example Columbus, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Indianapolis, Chicago. The AIR hands freight for these destinations off to the W&LE/NKP.

So do I label the doors: WLE-COLUMBUS, WLE-CLEVELAND, NKP-TOLEDO, etc…?

I believe that play value is increased, incrementally, by using the railroad/city titles, but I think confusion of the operator also goes up. 

Do any of you model a Transfer Freight House? Do you model LCL packages with multiple waybills? Do you include a “Grand Sort” of LCL bills in your FH procedures?



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