--- In STMFC@..., "Paul" <buygone@...> wrote:

In simple terms, a team track was a railroad owned spur that non

rail served

customers could ship or receive carload traffic. A private spur was

just

that private. Only the owner of that property could ship or receive

carload

traffic. If the owner of this private spur ceased to ship or

receive rail

traffic, it was not uncommon for the railroad to remove the switch

serving

the private spur as that was railroad owned.

But that doesn't address Tom's question, which appears to boil down
to, "Is any railroad owned siding a team track?" I would have to say…
it depends.

Obviously, one could not consign a car to the local roundhouse and
expect to pick the load up there, so somewhere in the tarrifs there
must be a list of tracks that are specifically set aside for this use.
Likewise, there are many railroad owned tracks that serve private
businesses that can't be team tracks simply because the only access is
on private property. However, if the railroad provided driveway access
on their own property, I'm sure they could designate the portion of a
track still on their property as a "public team track" if they chose to..

To respond to Tom's question about railroad owned track that looked
like a private siding, this was pretty common in the Midwest. Here it
was quite common for the railroad to construct a track along one edge
of their station grounds and encourage small industry to locate along
it. In Elburn, on the former C&NW, we have a railroad owned track that
once served a farm service fertilizer shed and three oil jobbers, one
of which was located across a public street and had a pipe buried
under that street to reach his unloading stand along the track.

The C&NW also maintained a public team track, and a public stock pen
on the station grounds. At one point they leased the stock pens to the
local packing house, at which point I would imagine they were no
longer available for public use. And, more recently, the railroad
owned siding along the fertilizer shed on the other side of the
mainline temporarily became (with a lot of improvement) the Union
Pacific's eastbound mainline while the new trackage for the Metra
terminal was under construction. As that work finished up, the track
was shifted away from the still existing (but no longer active)
fertilizer warehouse. For a while, it was quite a close shave between
the building and passing mainline trains.

To sum up for Tom, a track isn't a team track unless the railroad says
it is a team track, and somewhere there will be a list.

Dennis