Cumberland County
Yards, two ramps and five quarries inside fifteen miles
The North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics lists a Norfolk Southern rail yard under a mile from the centre. What makes it unusual is not the yard, it is what surrounds it: the Harrisburg intermodal ramp about 2 miles north-east, the Harrisburg Yard about 2 miles east and the Rutherford ramp about 7 miles east.
The industry follows the rail. The Steelton Quarry about 8 miles south-east works limestone with 16 people, the Silver Springs Quarry about 9 miles south-west with 19, the Locust Point Quarry about 10 miles south-west with 13, and two more sit around Middletown about 10 miles east.
Two yards carry this name, and only one of them is here
That yard has a namesake and it is worth being straight about it. The same rail network data lists a yard named for this place here and another about 2 miles north at Marysville, both under the same carrier.
The North American Millers’ Association’s mill map places a flour mill at Camp Hill about 5 miles south, and the Shiremanstown yard is about the same distance.
Two depots and a barracks in the same circle
That circle holds more than industry. The naval support activity at Mechanicsburg is about 6 miles south-west, a defence distribution depot about 8 miles south-east and Carlisle Barracks about 14 miles south-west. Fort Indiantown Gap is about 18 miles north-east.
So the freight here is not one industry. Limestone out of five quarries, grain into a flour mill, containers off two intermodal ramps and government traffic through three installations, all inside about 18 miles of one another.
Day cabs and road tractors off the ramps, tri-axle dumps and aggregate haulers off the quarries, flatbeds, rollbacks, service bodies and the pickups every small operation keeps beside its big truck.
Between the Steelton Quarry about 8 miles south-east and the Fiddlers North Quarry about 10 miles east the stone side turns over on its own cycle, separately from anything the ramps do.
- A day cab that worked intermodal is the same truck to us.
- Can you collect from a yard or a ramp?Around the Harrisburg Yard and the Rutherford ramp it is routine — a gate and a contact is all we need.
- We run three trucks.That is the usual size around the Silver Springs Quarry and the pits at Middletown. One truck at a time is the normal sale, and it does not have to be the whole fleet.
A haulage contract moves to another carrier, or a quarry finishes a job, and the truck that served it has no obvious second home. Three and four-truck outfits do not have somewhere to park a spare.
So it sits between the Locust Point Quarry about 10 miles south-west and the Fiddlers Elbow South Quarry about 11 miles south-east, on ground that has no further use for it.