Dauphin County
Three quarries inside four miles
The North American Rail Network maintained by the Federal Railroad Administration and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics places the Rutherford Yard, operated by Norfolk Southern, 0.91 miles from the Census centre of the place. An intermodal ramp sits 0.6 miles from the yard.
Beyond the rail, stone loads very close to here. The Fiddlers North Quarry is 2.5 miles off and the Fiddler’s Elbow South Quarry 2.8 miles, both at Middletown, and the Steelton Quarry 3.6 miles away with 16 people on it.
Having aggregate that close to an intermodal ramp is unusual and it shapes the work: short heavy runs from a pit to a yard, repeated, rather than long hauls. A truck doing that accumulates load cycles far faster than it accumulates miles.
The rail complex around the capital, spread over four counties
Those two are the near end of a much wider rail complex. The Harrisburg Yard is 6.1 miles off with another ramp 6.8 miles out, and westward the Enola yard is 7.9 miles away in Cumberland County, with a second Enola yard 8.5 miles off in Perry County and the Shiremanstown yard the same distance at Camp Hill.
The rest is not rail at all. The North American Millers’ Association’s mill map places a flour mill 7.8 miles off at Camp Hill and another 10.2 miles away at Palmyra in Lebanon County, and the Bureau of Transportation Statistics lists a naval supply activity 11.1 miles off at Mechanicsburg and a defence distribution depot 4.8 miles away over the river in York County.
Four counties inside about thirteen miles, and river crossings between most of them. In this state the authority that posts a bridge is frequently the township rather than the county, so a lane of a dozen miles can answer to several posting authorities.
Dumps off the quarries, flatbeds and day cabs off the ramps, tankers, rollbacks, box trucks, straight trucks, service bodies and pickups.
Between the Steelton Quarry and the Harrisburg Yard the running is short, heavy and repetitive. A modest odometer on a truck from here can sit behind a great many loaded cycles, and we read the truck rather than the number.
A truck specced for one lane out of the Rutherford Yard does not always suit the next one, and around here there are enough lanes for that to happen regularly.
The rest is retirements, estates and fleets renewing themselves, from Camp Hill across to the depot over the river.