No Spur? No Problem

Quiskeya Foods. Facing south from 71st Street. November 29, 2024, Tolga Erbora Photo.

The ever-vigilant Tolga Erbora recently sent me this photo, taken on Lead 1 in FEC’s CIS Industrial Park. You’re facing south. The industry is Quiskeya Foods. If you take a second and put the entire scene into context it has interesting implications both on the design and operations front. If you look at the track you can see that Lead 1 is a fairly busy branch. Further to the south, just out of view, is the largest customer, Trujillo Foods.

Here’s the interesting part, notice that the customer has no spur. Notice the unique loading dock and ramp arrangement. It’s not like this is at the end of a section of track that’s sinking into the weeds. They’ve spotted the car right on the main. Because Trujillo is so busy, they won’t be able to leave it there long. The customer will need to unload it quickly and I’m sure FEC made that point ahead of time. Rail GM’s are constantly complaining about customers who take too long to unload cars. When the TBOX is ready to pull, they would either pluck it off the track individually or push it all of the way down to Trujillo as part of working that job.

Here’s a map of CIS. The red box is about a half mile long north to south.

Another view taken from the same 71st street vantage point on a different day. The track has been upgraded since the shot was taken. Quiskeya is on the left with the blue awning.

So, there you go, you can add an industry and some interesting ops. without laying any track or putting in a turnout.

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I have an entire chapter on the CIS industrial park in my book, 8 Track Plans For Modern Switching Layouts.