Shipping By Rail

Shipping By Rail. How Forest Products Made In Davis Went To Market By Train. , Davis industries like the sawmill made varied forest products between the 1880s and 1920s. The West Virginia Central and Pittsburg Railroad, later Western Maryland, provided these businesses with access to distant locations, enabling their existence here. Trains shipped hardwood lumber for fine woodworking; softwood for construction; large timbers for frame buildings and mine supports; pulpwood for paper mills; leather for shoes, clothing, industrial belts, and tack; and chemicals extracted from timber. Each industry had facilities to make loading railroad cars as efficient as possible, and the railroad supplied different types of freight cars for each type of load. Loaded trains left Davis daily with diverse products for the world., (Captions):, The sawmill held a strategic place between the river and the railroad. The river provided boiler water and a place to store logs. The railroad shipped products to market. Nearly the entire edge of the mill complex facing the railroad, stretching for several hundred feet, consisted of a wooden dock for loading freight cars with finished lumber. There was also rail access to specific buildings in the mill complex, allowing for shipment of pulpwood to paper mills, delivery of coal for the boilers, and bringing tools and supplies to the plant., Narrow-gauge rails on the loading platform as shown at upper left allowed workers to move lumber stacks into position. Lumber shipped either on open-topped freight cars or in boxcars, depending on how much protection from theft and the elements it required. Timbers and construction framing might ship in the open, whereas hardwood destined for a furniture factory might ship inside a boxcar., At the top, gondola cars (open-topped freight cars with low sides) are fully loaded. The sawmill workers who loaded gondolas and flatcars were responsible for tying and bracing the loads to ensure they didn't shift in transportation. Above, a mixed collection of full and empty freight cars await loading and shipment., Mail, locally-destined merchandise, and people arrived and departed at Davis's combination passenger and freight station., Railroader's equipment at a small, industrial freight yard: a key for unlocking track switches, left, and a can for oiling railroad car bearings, above., The long building in the foreground of this image is the planing mill, where lumber was fine-tuned and trimmed down to its exact shape and dimensions. The cart tracks on the loading dock connected the planing operation to the storage yards in the distance, where the finished lumber was stacked for final curing before shipment., Image Credits: Background / Pete Johnson - Upper Left / Pete Johnson - Middle Left / Tekavec Zadell collection via Jeanette Ware - Lower Left / David Strahin - Upper Right / Pete Johnson, Layouts and text by David A. Vago Historic Resource Planning and Design