Just getting started on my new layout, its 2'x24' and need some help. It will be a switching style design, but I only want one large industry to dominate the plan, appx. 14' of the 24'. My problem is "what industry"? I want something different, layout will be set in the 1960-65 time frame, running SD9's and GP9s, and a couple of SW's. SO what do ya'll think would be "the" industry? Robert
Robert, firstly a warm welcome to Trainboard We have a friendly, helpful, knowledgable folks here, so you should get some good advice. What scale is the layout to be? I presume N? "The" industry depends on your preferences, types of freightcars you would like to incorporate, etc. Is there any industry you have a particular interest in, or knowledge of? An industry which uses rail for both inbound and outbound products is a plus, and one that needs various different types of car makes for more interest. It will be interesting to see suggestions.
Also, do you want to dominate the layout vertically (grain elevator and lotsa silos) or horizontally (refinery or autorack loading facility). Industries that use a lot of switching within itself would be a wood/paper mill, iron and steel works and even a brewery. On the other hand, what about a "company town" type of industry, like Trona, the salt/borax mining, processing and loading facility in (where else?) Trona, CA, between Ridgecrest and Death Valley. Interesting thing about Trona is they buy used power from UP, SP and others, so you can run any locos you want and just "modify" existing paint schemes. William
Of course, if you model a road from the South, you can find something to do with the word "coal" in it!
Alan, thanks for the welcome, layout is HO scale. Type of freight cars? Oh a little bit of everything! No particular type of industry interest. William, a little of both, vertical and horizontal, Not wanting to be difficult, but I want to model something "different" no coal, no steel mills, auto fact, etc. Yeah I know, thats being difficult. Not sure I even know if what I want is even possible, just looking for something different. Robert
Robert, a beer brewery is "usual?" Are you looking for lots of trackage INSIDE the industry, or for it to just be an eye-catcher, but a simple one or two track customer? William
How about something like a farmers co-operative? all kinds of cars, grain, lp gas, fuel oil, gasoline, farm store supplies. Most co-ops are fairly spred out and you can really get a lot of switching going on!!!
I like the paper mill concept- one place to unload woodchip hoppers, another spur to unload pulpwood flats (or woodracks, as they're called in SE Oklahoma), and yet other places to spot cars for kaolin and misc. chemicals for unloading, and to spot double-door boxcars for loading the finished product. A Geep would make an ideal switcher (or an Alco RS1, RS2 or RS3) for the paper mill, if you wanted just one diesel for the mill and one for the local as it comes into town to switch out cuts of cars. As for the rest of the layout, perhaps a feed mill for the local farmers- check out Walthers' ADM grain elevator. This could be either for grain/wheat/soybeans, or inbound corn for chicken houses.
Paper mills are very good railroad industries to model. I have been to many in Wisconsin and they do get lots of traffic. A few years ago I had to go on an inspection trip for my work to a cotton seed oil plant. The plant was located in Darlington SC, close to the lady in black if you’re into that sport. I thought that would be a good industry to model. The cotton storage sheds are very different looking. I don't know If you could base a whole layout around one plant, you could have a few plants located a little ways apart and have a company owned railroad to switch between the different plants. The plants had hopper cars, tank cars, and a few boxcars on their sidings. The heavy traffic was tank cars of outbound oil and inbound chemicals. Our company build a plant that recovered usable product out of there waste stream. If you had more than one plant owned by the same company, you could have shipments of waste from the other plants to the one plant that had the waste recovery system for processing. You could use old tank cars that are not suitable for interchange service to haul the waste from one plant to the next. That would be a nice contrast from the newer tank cars.
There was a good article on paper mills a while back, I think it was either MR or MRP? Lots more traffic/car options than just the pulp & kaolin, the impression was that it was an industry big enough to dominate a layout the size you are talking about. Plus most of the freightcars for this industry are available in HO, in either the "southern" or "western" flavours of racks & chip cars, so it shouldn't be too hard.
Some years ago, Kalmbach published a couple of books about real railroads which one could model. I suspect they are out of print now, but perhaps you could find one in a library. They had one article about a branch line which served the breweries in Milwaukee. It is an interesting idea, especially for the 1960's. You could have boxcars and reefers for raw materials and product, and tank cars and covered hoppers for grain and other supplies. It was in an urban setting and even had a couple of other industries which provided some car variability. You could probably even include a coal fired boiler plant for the brewery.
That was MR that had the series on paper mills. I don't remember when they were printed, but one covered an older plant, while the other did a newer one. Since large parts of the South are covered in trees, and since it seems that the paper and lumber industries take advantage of this, a paper mill would be an ideal fit.
May not be 'different' enough for you, but what about a dockside? Most of the ones I've seen are 2 ft in an odd corner, but a 14 ft centrepiece would be, er, neat?
