Metropolitan Team Tracks

 The name “Metropolitan Team Tracks” is not a prototype name I am giving these “industries”*, it’s just a convenient name I’m using. Large cities had small yards organized with tracks spaced, usually, far enough apart to have paved roads between. Pairs of tracks, with paving on each side. Something like that. These Metro Team Tracks accommodated a lot of cars. Eric Hansmann sent me a photo of a large team track, in Pittsburgh, PA., from the 1920’s. It had several groups of paired tracks with paving between, with enough room for over 20 cars. Along one side was a covered loading dock, and in the middle of the yard was an overhead traveling crane. Behind the loading dock, paralleling the entire length of the team track was a scrap yard. The scrap yard had one track with room enough to hold ten gondolas. It loaded these gons with a crawler steam crane. 

On the tracks of this team facility were spotted primarily boxcars, but there was a flat car of lumber, a tank car, and a gondola. The track closest to the camera had a large pile of debris at the end. Was it a clean-out track? I cannot say for sure.

We have all been encouraged to add team tracks to our layouts, and this is a good case to follow the Koester Rule*, so I plan team tracks EVERYWHERE.

-BUT-

Just having one team track is not enough. Each team track needs a loading dock, a crane, and a clean-out spot. My metro team track will have a long covered loading dock, a clean-out track, and a large traveling crane. Cars waybilled to the team track will get notations to spot them at the dock, or crane, or upon pulling them, they might be assigned to the clean-out track.

It occurred to me that a “Cat Scale” might also be a good addition. A Cat Scale is a “Certified Automatic Truck Scale”. There is a network of these scales around the country where trucks can get an accurate weight, that is accepted by industry and government.  Would something like this be available to shippers on a railroad? 

Apparently these metro team tracks were owned and operated by the railroads themselves, so I assume access to a scale would be made by the railroad.

So switching a team track can be as complicated as you want to make it. A cut of cars for the team track gets handed off to the yard local. He then takes these cars to the team track and has to classify them for spotting at the dock, or the crane. Cars need to be pulled, but some need to be spotted at the clean out track, while others need to be weighed, while still others have to go back to the yard directly. 

These metro team tracks get more complicated the further you dig.



*A team track is a universal industry on any model railroad. Any car type can be spotted there.

* this Koester Rule pertains to duplicated industries. “If one is good, five is better”.

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