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prototype operation

Modeler's Moment - Tank car unloading at small industries

Modeler's Moment - Line up the cars for loading

lined up box cars

Have you ever wondered how the freight handlers loaded and unloaded box cars at multitrack freight houses when there wasn't a platform beside every track? They lined up the boxcar doors on adjacent tracks and put plates between the cars to bridge the gaps. Essentially, the cars on the outer tracks would become very short platforms to reach the cars on the inner tracks. This view is of the Milwaukee Road's Galewood Yard in Chicago, April 1943.

Modeler's Moment - Not just Southern ran long-hood-forward

WSOR backwards

It's not just Southern Railway that ran their locomotives long hood forward. Just because the control stand on the majority of locomotives is positioned for short hood forward operation doesn't mean that a locomotive can't be operated long hood forward. This Wisconsin and Southern train is taking loads westward from Madison through Middleton toward Prairie du Chien.

Modeler's Moment - Passenger train consists

Diagram of passenger car orientation within a train

On prototype passenger trains, the cars are often switched so that the doors are all at the same end of the car to ensure that passengers don't have to walk more than half the length of a car to board it at a station. Since dining cars normally didn't have station side doors, the door ends usually faced the dining car in the middle of the train.

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