Hello All, I am in the midst of finishing up plans for a 36" x 74" N scale NP layout taking place in Washington State. Besides timber and coal, what other mountain industries could I include? I ask because I have room for one more industry, but it is on the mountain side of the layout. Regards, Garret
Garret, Been a while since I left Washington for San Diego but here goes. On the west side of the Cascades you can have lumber and the concrete works in Concrete, WA. It went out of business (environmental) in the mid 70's. If you model later you may just be stuck with some Puget Sound shipping on one end of the layout. On the east side of the Cascades you have lumber, coal, and apples. Farther east you have wheat. Cheers, Jim CCRR/Socalz44
As far as actually being in the Cascades or their foothills, it depends upon your time frame. For the NP, coal on the west side was pretty much gone before WWII. So you'd have a lot of forest products- From logs to plywood. There were places of agriculture in the foothills. Dairy products, farming. Lumber to building supply, fuel dealer, etc. On the east side as already noted, one branch with coal and some forest products. There was one branch line that might have also had some agricultural traffic. But it's been a loooong time. The NP has been gone for almost 40 years. Yeow. I don't recall any gypsum on the NP. Concrete, as mentioned, was on the Great Northern RY. Beyond the above, you're getting out of mountain territory. Either along Puget Sound, or such as the Kittitas Valley and Yakima Valley areas. Boxcab E50
907guy - Sounds like you've got two industries that ship out (coal and lumber). Perhaps you could use one that receives "loaded" cars. A team track immediately comes to mind, but some of them saw rather infrequent use, especially in sparsely populated areas. How about a combination wholesale grocer/beer distributor for hungry and thirsty miners and lumberjacks.
Depends on what side of the state you are modeling. Grain would be another choice for you as quite often there were elevators placed near where the tracks were and not always near the fields, it was trucked in and then loaded on the trains.
Thanks for the info so far. To offer a little more background on my layout, I already planned for a yard with turntable and roundhouse, a coal mine, a logging camp, a farm area with creamery, and a brewery. As much as I would like to replicate prototype, I simply do not have enough space. So right now I am setting out to capture the general setting. Puyallup, WA is my hometown (live in Virginia Beach now), which is what inspired me to model the northwest. I wanted the steam to diesel transition era, and based on the NP reading I have done, it sounds like in the mid 1950s there was a definite abundance of both. I was born in 1978, so the steam era, the NP, and the BN merger all happened before I was around yet. I like the ideas so far. This last siding happens to be at the highest point of the layout. I am still also trying to find a way to make for an interchange that would connect with the SP&S and GN. Perhaps I can move the logging camp to that high siding and convert the existing logging camp into the interchange. Regards, Garret
Hi Garrett, and welcome to Trainboard!:teeth: On top of what everyone else has suggested, (wood and lumber, some produce, and general freight), NP also had a lot of chemicals in tank cars. Just all depends on the period your modeling.
Maybe you should start a poll to vote for the final industry? I would say a grain elevator, would give you a chance to run covered hoppers which are everywhere up here.
Grain elevators would be fun, but weren't exactly mountain industries. Especially on the NP that I knew. Boxcab E50
If the last siding is the highet point why not put a glaicer coming off the mountain and load ice into refers? As for real idea a log loading operation, coal mine of lumber mill would work great. Kevin
Sure they were, look up the Camas Prairie. They even had tramways that brought grain from up on the Prairies down to the canyon floors to load onto train cars.
