-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know most switching layouts tend to be more industrial, but I was wondering if any of you guys have ever thought about something more rural/small town looking with grain elevators and industries that would support a farming comunity? I'm working on my switching layout which will be N scale and take up 2.5 feet x 5 feet. Although I've got the industries I need (grain--two elevators, lumber, LPG, cement, pulpwoord, farm supply) it's become more congested like a city type/industrial area than a country scene. I know the easy solution is to reduce the number of industries, but then the switching layout has less options and may become boring. I guess it could be a small division point so it's like a small rural town, but I was tring to get the open feeling of the plains and wheat country. Any suggestions/ideas or trackplans you guys might come up with? I'll try and post what I've got, but it doesn't work out in the Atlas track software and I can't figure out xtrack cad. Maybe I'll just take a picture of the paper it's drawn on.
Keep playing around with it TX, I have wanted a rural layout for some time now. On my current layout everything is set in the flat plains of the midwest so it's all flat. I have a small town area with similar industries and I ran into the same problem. At first I was sort of frustrated by it. I was really starting to hate my layout too. Now I realize that the compression of elements seems to be working. My town is made up of four long spurs. Industries/structures include: Depot Door panel factory (kind of a joke for us modelers on door panels, it's named the horizontal door company) Iron works fuel dealer Coal dealer- it's kind of beyond it's era but I like coal cars so it stays. Grain elevator Team track loading ramp/dock Some of these structures aren't exactly rural, but I was going for a medium developed look. It also gives me more places to spot cars like gons and flats for the iron works, grainers for my elevator, tankers for my little fuel dealer, coal hoppers, boxcars at the door place. My biggest problem was structure placement. It took a while to get it right. I also had a Walthers furniture factory kit that no matter how hard I tried wouldn't look right because it was so big, it got cut up for a viaduct over the yard on the other half of the layout. So if you have the structures built already, try moving them around and refitting them into your scene. I think eventually you'll hit on something you like.
I'd be curious to see what you create. While I have seen some outstanding efforts, the large city industrial type has never appealed to me, as a personal project. Boxcab E50
I'm doing a small farm town theme on my little expanded door layout...but I'd not call it a switching layout as such. Compromise Junction is a small farm town at the junction between is a branch line oval for continuous running, and a truncated main passing by along one side. Off the branch line loop there is a grain elevator, feed mill, oil dealer, coal yard, passenger station, small freight house, a short storage track. There will be set of 3 small drop-off/pick-up sidings off the truncated main. Other than as a route to the drop-off/pick-up sidings, the truncated main primarily serves as a fiddle track since I have no yard as such. <shrug>
You specified a small 2.5 x 5 N scale layout. I recently dismantled one that was 3 x 7, most of it represented a small town, and I thought it looked like that. It had an agricultural business section along the tracks. My town scene including industries was only 2 feet deep, backed up against a tree-line view block. The town disappeared into the woods. I wonder if a scenic viewblock would help create the desired look of a country scene. Overall view of most of the layout-- implement dealer, with bulk oil dealer on end of same spur Don't try to fill up middle of layout with track, keep spurs close to through track, with suggestion there is rest of town or open space just a short distance from tracks.
I had an HO layout in Colorado that was part urban (well, a town of 15,000 or so), part rural, and it had a grain elevator in the rural section. I've also seen track plans for a largely rural layout, so it's quite possible.
1. I don't think you will sell "small town" with two elevators. Yes, plenty of small towns in the midwest have two (or more) elevators, but in modeling I just think you will have a hard time convincing your audience with two overbearing concrete structures in the space you have available. (plus, the silos from the cement plant, too) Now, I do know your propensity for grain hoppers, and if you must have another destination for LO's, consider a smaller metal elevator (ala Rix) as your secondary. 2. The latest craze with Class 1's like BNSF is the bulk unloading facility, kinda like a team track on steroids. Well, small towns have been doing this for years! Utilize a single team track to handle the lumber, LPG, pulpwood, and farm supply. Put the LPG at the far end...I don't think they're a usually a high volume customer and the unloading equipment would be more out of the way at the end of the track. (there are probably safety considerations too like the cars being unloaded have to be x number of feet from the nearest structure or something like that) Then use the rest of the team track for the others. Simplifies (prototypical), minimizes turnouts (prototypical), and achieves your goal of avoiding boring switching moves! 3. Team Track, take two. Another trick that BNSF does in my hometown, is take the outermost yard track and convert it to an "overflow" team track. (often, as in this case, the tracks are adjacent) So, if the primary track is full, spot the cars on that track, back up a "ramp"--in this case a converted flatbed trailer, and let the customers "have at it". 4. Minimize the cement plant. I've seen some extremely busy cement plants with half the silos of the Walthers Medusa kit, so think about "bashing down" to have a more "small town" feel. (and reduce footprint, and add more "open space".) 5. Consider adding an interchange. Zero additional structures to clutter things up, virtually unlimited variation in rolling stock exchanged, and a reason for the railroad being a little more than the town would require. (i.e. a slightly bigger yard, etc.) It wouldn't be uncommon for the second railroad to serve the town's large elevator either so there might be another operating wrinkle.
In an adaptation of Doug's suggestion,just keep one grain elevator. The Afton Farmers Co-op in Afton,OK (in the former Frisco Cherokee Sub and Afton Sub junction) has one large grain elevator facility as well as a separate building for receiving misc.ag supplies. One could also add a spur for the anhydrous ammonia tankers as well. All this in a town of just 1100 people (back in the 1970s). One could also go with an ethanol plant, or even a paper mill. Lots of possibilities out there..........
I'm building an N scale Midwest shortline serving a rural region. There will be two towns, one the headcourters for the road and where most of the industries will be located. The theme is strictly rural; the road connects with larger roads off in the distance (not on the layout). One town has a large grain elevator, food processing plant, meat packer, dairy products processor. The food plant may be eliminated since I'm starting to use too much space, eliminating the small-town, rural theme at that location. The other, smaller town will have two small grain elevators, a wood products factory and, hopefully (still trying to fit it in after eliminating another industry), a stone quarry. The larger town has a business district of several buildings; the smaller town's business district isn't modeled. The layout is flat, but a long bluff will hide track at the back of the layout. The idea is to have flatlands with rocky bluffs in the background. A lot of railroading will be available. I may be attempting to put in too many industries; I've eliminated one and may eliminate another. Structure kits already put together get first dibs on layout locations. I don't want to build models I can't use (I could sell them, though). I almost forgot to mention the lake next to the larger town. That, like the bluffs, will be prime scenery.
I would think more rural switching-type layouts are quite common. I have built several. One of the best published was Gordie Odegard's New Lisbon module in MR in 1976, with hand laid code 40. You didn't say what era you are modeling. Certainly in western Canada in years past, lots of very small towns had multiple wood grain elevators. They also often had lumber yards, coal dealers, stock pens, etc. It wasn't so much the size of the town that governed, as the size of the trading/service area. David
Yes I built my son a rural based switching layout using unitrack. (he got all my n scale stuff when I converted to HO). It is 6ft long by 16in wide. Here's a couple pics: Trackplan based off Andrew Martins Iota design Iota Branch Overall view The little dude switchin' The layout keeps him occupied for a good hour or so. Sometimes his buddy comes over and they take turns as engineer and conductor.
That's a cool little layout Moose. I've always liked that trackplan. I've been working on some things and I'll hopefully have something to post up in the next day or so. I took some of that brown packing paper you get at the office supply that is 2 1/2 ft wide and cut a five foot section. Then I took a ruler, some track and a couple turn outs and started drawing things in a close to scale layout. It's coming along pretty good, but there are a couple things I hope to figure out before proceeding. I'll post what I come up with soon so you guys can give me some feedback. Thanks again for all the ideas and direction. I have come to realize that in this size space, there is little I can do to spread things out--either cut back on the industries, or just make it work and get the "feel" of a small town.
I'm building a mid west flavour sub, and I have a "car float", and dock that are actually going to serve as my interchange point. I have a small yard on one end, and a rock crushing plant on the other bank across the river from the car float dock. Soon I'll have a couple of smaller industrial buildings arriving that I can spread around and also a flour mill too. Sooo, there is where I am, Photos to follow, although I do have the first photos of the scratch built car float and dock in my folder already. These are both still works in progress though. Mark+
So Mark, is the car float actually going to me moved by hand or otherwise with cars on it to the destination? I've always liked the car float idea, but I wondered what people that model one did with it. Actually moving the float to another location and unloading the cars sounds like a cool idea.
In a way, I guess my N scale Arklatex Sub is rural, since that's where most paper mills I've seen are located. Also, I know of several rural sites that have large grain elevators for poultry feed (eastern OK on the KCS, and Simmons in Fairland, OK on the former Frisco). I don't plan on putting any "townie" buildings in large quantity on my layout except for maybe a rural "fillin' station" or greasy spoon-type cafe.
No one has mentioned feed mills yet. This would definitely place the layout in a rural setting and provide lots of traffic. This article from the Middleton & New Jersey RR shows just how much traffic. http://www.mnjrhs.org/freight_bills.html This particularly interests me as I love short covered hoppers. Ken
For rural, don't forget the option of a logging layout. The tracks near a sawmill see a lot of switching, and you can add several related industries. Many of the big mills owned their own switching locomotive(s) and switched cars around their mills.
there should be no problem getting that small town feel out in rural America with the number of industries you want. Either shift the entire town to one side of the layout or place it in the middle with farm fields for the open areas to give the layout the theme of location. Many of the small farming communities in southwestern KY (Trenton, Guthrie, even Hopkinsville's edges) are centered on the grain silos with a siding and several spurs for hoppers and one or two team tracks. Once you leave that little town area....nothing but corn, soy, and tobacco fields until the next town.
Rural will be affected by the region. What kind of agriculture or industry. For example the Frankfort & Cincinnati in Kentucky served several bourbon distilleries. One sure-fire way to convey a rural setting is tractors being unloaded from the team track. Tom Johnson's INRAIL layout set in Northern Indiana in the late 70's has just grain elevators and the occasional fertilizer dealer. Ken
Wow, another old thread resurfaced, but a good point. I'm doing the tiny logging railroads, of course, which consist of two basic activities - logs from the woods to the pond, and lumber products from the mill to the interchange. But I also have inbound boxcars and a reefer to the company store, inbound coal, interchange activities to another connecting logging carrier, and even a shortline passenger train. The mill has three loading docks for various products - outbound slash chunks for chemical wood (offline), a loading deck for outsized timbers (flatcars) and the typical lumber piles for outbound loading in boxcars (1920 era). So as an "industrial" railroad it works nicely. For the midwest, I've visited one town that REALLY stuck in my mind as ideal for this kind of layout. Check out Concordia, KS. For a little town, you've never seen so much rail activity in a town this small, and this much track. At one time it had ATSF, MP, CB&Q, and UP, each with their own track, depot, etc. Even when I was there in the early 90's it was kind of a maze of track with multiple-rail access to elevators, interchanges, feed, etc. Would make a fascinating 'rural industrial' site that could have almost anything showing up because of the various interchanges. http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?11,1615290
