Industrial & Port Facilities on my Peninsula


beiland

Well-Known Member
Industrial & Port Facilities on my Peninsula

What structures, & where am I going to place them on my central peninsula deck area??

Basically this is the planning for the other half of peninsula area adjacent to my container terminal

Lets begin with the biggest space hog, the car-float and its companion the loading apron. Originally I had no intentions to place such an item on my layout,..even though I had all the Walthers kits. It was only when I happenstance acquired a Frenchman River carfloat at a local flea market recently, that I began to give the idea some more thought.


I placed it out on the end of my peninsula,...and it just so happened it was located directly across the aisle from the other waterfront scene I had gotten from an estate sale.











That waterfront scene already has several tug boats on it, and even a small coal barge itself.






In fishing terminology, I was 'hooked'.
 
I needed some other structures in this port peninsula. One that came to mind right away was the Walthers 'Municipal Pier Terminal'


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Baltimore had a number of these same type structures on their waterfront in the early days,...and even today there is still one very similar structure in the Fells Point area. I seem to recall seeing a photo of several of these pier street terminals on a cobble stone street with rails that the infamous B&O docksiders used to roam. Can't find those particular images at the moment, but here is something like it,...
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I was going to have my rail cars entering such a pier/warehouse thru the front door, then out thru the back door onto my carfloat. Humm, do I have enough space for that? Turns out I might, but perhaps a lot of 'condensing'. My first mock-up....
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That big rectangular piece of white paper represents the full foot-print of the Walthers kit that feeds the apron, then the carfloat. As you can see, in order to get the pier terminal bldg to clear the travel of the container crane the terminal bldg must overhang the edge of the peninsula deck just a bit,...about 2.5”. I could live with that slight excursion into the aisle.


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I even found that the Walthers tug boat might be allowed to sit next to the carfloat with only a slight excursion into the aisle,..
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I now had practically no trackage in the front yard of the pier terminal to stage any cars that would be loading onto the carfloat? Plus I had no idea of how some sort of switcher engine was going to manage this loading operation,...pushing, pulling, whatever??


I had one other desire,...a dockside crane down in the carfloat docking area that might load other barges from a track under it. Could I get a single long track to run down to this dockside crane at the peninsula tip?....perhaps that nice companion crane that Walthers pairs up with its pier terminal??.....something like this...
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(the crane in the photo is NOT the correct one, just sat there for clarification)



As can be seen the paper template of the terminal bldg needs to be 'trimmed'. In other words one side of the terminal building needs to be cut off. I wonder what this would look like?



That 'dockside crane track' could also provide some temp storage for some of the cars that would be waiting to load aboard the carfloat.
 
Just above I had hinted that I might have to slice a portion of that terminal bldg off,.....and that I might wish to have some track(s) extend back to a bigger dockside crane.



Things were rather tight in this relatively narrow peninsula, so I figured I had to get that terminal kit out of its plastic wrapping and see what its true dimensions were. SURPRISE! It turned out more narrow that the 'footprint' dimensions that Walthers published,...likely because Walthers had included the concrete loading docks on either side of the building. Perhaps I could get away without including these (on at least one side), or make them very brief.


Somehow I saved almost 5” of width over the original template I had fashioned. I got the front face of the building out and laid it over my new paper temple.



Now lets see if I can fit a double track in there leading to the dockside crane? At this stage I had to go back and firm up my spacing for all the container terminal tracks (took time to rework a little, moving the runaround track over ¼” and providing for clearance with the legs of the container cranes). Now I had my confirmed spacing for those container tracks and cranes.





I laid down the 2 dockside tracks I was hoping to fit in, and that determined where the edge of the terminal bldg could be.



I had to move the centerline of my terminal bldg over about an inch towards the edge of the deck to get that all in. This centerline relocation also resulted in my having to move the carfloat and its apron over as well.






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Several good details resulted. I would NOT have to cut up the body of the terminal bldg, and I could have 2 full length tracks running back to the dockside crane,....temp storage for cars waiting to be loaded on the carfloat. These 2 tracks and that dockside crane could also be utilized to load other 'unusual' items onto either the carfloat, or any other barge/small ship that could be pulled into that dock.








I'm becoming more convinced that I should include this pier terminal structure in my layout?
 
Revised Plan

It has been suggested by several folks that I get rid of at least one of those big structures in my port facilities area on the outer portion of my peninsula,...perhaps the car float or the pier terminal building. I thought about it all Christmas long, and wasn't able to come up with any satisfying imagine in my mind. I decided to get some of the wall structures of that pier terminal building out of its box, then tape it together to see what the full size building might look like. WOW, I discovered that I had made my original paper footprint image too small. That bldg is 16” long,...not 12”. Now I'm really in trouble,...or not?



For a short period of time I considered leaving that pier terminal bldg off the layout. But once set in place it just looked so inviting as a waterfront item, and one that said Baltimore waterfront (Fells Point) to me. Plus its extra length looked that much more inviting. It could handle two box cars at a time


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It was big enough inside that I could well imagine that box cars could be pulled in there, then partially loaded/unloaded by forklifts separating out goods to be stored temporarily in the terminal warehouse vs those that were being carfloated out to some other waterfront destination. (might even be able to leave the roof off of that kit to display such activity?)


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Now its time to give Dave's suggestion some more thought. Perhaps I need to modify my carfloat structure so that it only gets full size recognition during operating sessions,..make some sort of extension such as his? At first I thought about putting the 'phantom/removable carfloat' suspended off the entire tip of the peninsula. But that would mean my dock slip for that watercraft would NOT be on peninsula acreage, and thus no need for my dockside crane. I needed some portion of that carfloat (and its slip space) on the peninsula,...thus the 'carfloat half'. The other half would be brought out and set upon an removable extension to the tip of the peninsula.


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Now that I have that removable extension piece, why couldn't it support several other watercraft that might make use of that dock slip on occasions,....like a small freighter to be loaded by the dockside crane, or ......


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......another tug boat taking a break.


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I had to make a modification to those double tracks I originally had come all the back and under the dockside crane, but even that worked out well. I now have a runaround on those tracks for the working switchers.
 
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Pier vs Intermodal Yard

You do realize that the "municipal pier" and the intermodal yard are in many ways mutually exclusive.

Container traffic put the break bulk piers out of business to a large extent. Looking at New York, Baltimore and New Orleans harbors, there wasn't a single "municipal pier" in service. The only one of those harbors that had a single ship capable of working a "municipal pier" was Baltimore, because it had a Liberty Ship on display as a museum.

I do realize that they are what we might call mutually exclusive scenes, but I am not letting this get in the way of having my pier terminal & intermodal yard next to one another,....and I even threw in the carfloat.

Seems as though I am not the only person thinking this way,...John P was kind enough to post this photo this morning
http://www.modelrailroadforums.com/...ipal-piers-docksider-locos.31939/#post-470143

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Alternative Spot for Pier Terminal Bldg

There was only one other spot on my lower peninsula that had enough real estate where I might relocate that pier terminal to. I placed the partial bldg over that spot where I intended to place Allied Rail Rebuilders


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I'm not too enthused about it,...not exactly a 'pier/waterside/dock location'.
 
Its been quite some time since I last worked on this peninsula area. I was just recently laying some of the track and deciding to change a number of things since my original 'full scale track planing drawings'.

Here is what I have come up with. No longer is the carfloat accessed by a track thru the terminal building. Rather the carfloat is accessed by its own 2 tracks along side that terminal building. The terminal building itself has been changed by adding another front face to make it appear as the image of magoun pier. The dockside crane of walthers has neen now moved over to service items out back of the terminal building.


I finally like this layout area
yes



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...and now I have a track on the other side,...to act as tail track for that other industry that will be on that siding,...and to act as extra waiting track for other cars waiting for either break-freight in warehouse, or eventual loading onto carfloat, etc ( I will have to provide a little extra strip of deck plywood to accommodate this spur)
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It was a jig saw puzzle getting that track configuration in there,...thank goodness for Peco turnout design (curved diverging tracks allow for compact track planning).
 



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