A Freight House can be a focal point of action.
While researching for my last layout I came across several maps an images of freight houses in Elkins, Morgantown, Fairmont, and Clarkburg, West Virginia. In each case, the freight house had two closely-spaced, parallel tracks on one side of the building. In most cases, these tracks were in pavement. I recall the Morgantown freight house had the two tracks, then an open space and two more tracks. All of this was in a paved area with the two tracks across the open space more of a team track area.
Why two parallel tracks beside the building? Cars would be spotted with the doors lined up and metal plate bridges placed between cars to enable loading and unloading. Check out this image:
http://www.shorpy.com/node/704?size=_original
Although I can't see any of these plate bridges in this image, I believe it is apparent the cars at the Galewood freight house are spaced to enable easy loading using plate bridges to access cars one or two tracks from the dock. It's easy to dismiss this as a big city operation, after all it is metro-Chicago. But take a good look at Sanborn Maps, track spotting diagrams, valuation maps, or whatever prototype detail you are using to design or build your layout. I noted four West Virginia towns that had freight houses, each with two tracks along one side of the facility. These were not the biggest towns in the state.
The details I found also influenced the planning and construction of an industrial segment of a club layout in Morgantown, W.Va. Some of this is detailed at this site:
http://www.mvrrc.org/layout/stgeorge.htm
Scrolling down to the fourth image, the freight house tracks can be seen on the inside curve of the image. There are two tracks here beside the freight house. Each track holds four forty-foot cars. A team track is also in the area and is noted in the diagram directly above the image. The peak of the freight house roof is visible behind the line of box cars. This is a mock up but it follows the same dimensions of the Western Maryland Railway freight house that once stood on 12th Street in Elkins, W. Va. The dimensions came from valuation notes I copied at the Archives II facility of the National Archives.
During an ops session, the freight house and team track is pulled first with replacement cars spotted. The pulled cars go to the nearby yard for classification into outbound trains. Some are LCL cars that will go on local turns to one of four on-line towns, or sent to one of three staging areas to towns on the railroad beyond the scenery. If the op session lasts long enough, another freight house pull is done to finish the day.
A freight house and team track can add lots of action in a small space. The parallel freight house tracks can double the capacity and car movements. In the days before decent highways, this is how medium and large parcels were moved to customer delivery. Remember when the lamp arrived in "A Christmas Story"? Were those UPS guys delivering that huge crate? Nope. They brought the parcel from a local freight house, possibly under Railway Express shipping. If you model an era before 1960, then a freight house is an active part of the transportation system. If you model before WWII, then it is a vital part of the transportation system.
Eric