Rural Industries

I'm modeling the mid 1970's on a 36x80" door. It is to be a small fictitious rural town in Texas. I'm going to have three spurs for industries, and I am having a hard time coming up with businesses that would receive a variety of freight cars. One spur is already dedicated to a Grain Elevator. And I was thinking of having the second be a Farm supply industry. That way it could receive flat cars loaded with tractors, box cars of bagged fertilizer, seed and such, and maybe a few LPG tank cars for propane, this spur might even double as a team track. The third industry is giving me a hard time. I was thinking about a small cement operation, but I know nothing about those types of operations. Does anybody have any idea's for a third industry? Thanks for the help.

J

 

A good source of ideas are the books of the Kalmbach "Industries Along The Track" series by Jeff Wilson.
One industry that comes to my mind would be a rural power station that receives coal in hoppers, and some new machinery on a flatcar. The book has a picture of an indoor coal loading dock with a bridge to read the building.

P.S.: Another idea is a machine shop. You can build almost everything with Walthers Cornerstone Modulars, or/and the Green Max factory kits. You can always claim that they do something high-tech for NASA
(I was in Houston once to do some work for NASA, that's why I link NASA with Texas)
They might do something for the oil industry as well...

 

Hi,
Here is a link to a free program containing a database of about 40,000 prototype industries
Shenware IndMan

Gary

 

J - A small concrete products company rail served used to be quite common in small towns.
A ready-mix, block or pipe company would be quite appropriate, and the pipe plant would also receive (normally) box cars of wire mesh and rod to reinforce the pipe. Such a plant could receive covered hoppers (cement), open hoppers (sand & gravel), and boxcars (wire or possibly bagged cement and/or mortar mix).

A building supply company that handled lumber, plywood, sand and/or gravel, doors, windows, etc. would be another possibility.

Depending on which part of Texas you're modelling a packing shed or pulpwood yard could be good choices also.

 

Do you have an interchange track? That is a great place for manual on / off layout traffic.

Meat packing? - stock cars, reefers, boxcars
Scrap metal? - flat cars, gondolas, boxcars
Fantasy Machine Shop? Any type of car you want.

 

I have a similar operation except set in Wisconsin. I have a grain elevator and some sort of freight station (don"t know what yet) on one end of the door. The other end I've decided to put in a scrap yard. I bought the "Jurgen's junk Yard" by Monroe Models but haven't assembled it yet. I can spot gondolas, flat cars & open hoppers there. I'm thinking about a crane located there too. The far edge of the layout has an interchange track but I'm not sure what to put there?

 

WOWSERS Gary !! THNXS !!!!

I DL'd that program and ran it....more industrial info then any guy would ever need ^5 :thumbs_up:

.

 

If you don't have a lumber yard yet, you need one. Lumber/Building supplies may be one of the most numerous car loads a small town has in the 70's after home fuel oil and coal dropped off in the 60's.



Jason

 

A team track?

 

Depending on the part of Texas, a cottonseed oil plant is a possibility for outside a small town.

 

There is some claim that Texas has a legal right to be divided into five states. And Texas is a big and DIVERSE place.
Which Texas do you mean? Even restricting it to RURAL Texas.

The Texas of pine trees and iron-ore bearing red dirt?


The Texas coastal plain


The "Wild Horse Desert" of the "Disputed Territory" in deep south Texas


The Hill country?

The Panhandle?

Texas is a whole nuther country

 

I'm personally partial to the area around Austin in the late 60s. We would go camping at "Inks Lake State Park". I can remember the granite hills and collard lizards. What a blast for a 11yo.

You could do a quarry.

 

I took this photo from the Sunset Limited somewhere between Del Rio and El Paso last May. I'm not sure if it was what you would call an "industry", but it was near the Mexican border and appeared to have a rail spur.

 

Thanks for all the replies and ideas. I'm partial to the Panhandle area, where I spent a lot of time with family as a kid, or the the area south of Dallas north of Waco, where I'm from. I still can't decide what I want to put on that third spur. I'm going to snoop around on Google Earth today and look at small towns to see what I can find.

J

 

A brewery would receive and load, covered hoppers, boxcars, tanks and refers.

A typical “Texas” line side industry might be an Oil/Natural Gas Drilling/Service company such as Halliburton.

 

Since this is Texas, you could justify an oil field drilling/supply company:
1. Flat car pipe loads
2. Maybe a tank-car loading area for crude from the fields via pipeline or truck
3. Flat car machinery or construction vehicle loads
4. Lumber loads?
5. Box cars of "stuff"

 

Which is why I suggested it. Activities on a team track could change from year to year, month to month, depending on the modeler's preferences or to accomodate new cars, new vehicles, new just about anything that he/she has collected. It's an idea with a lot of potential.

A lift over the track works well. A ramp. A way for vehicles to get in and out of the area. And that's all you need.

 

Hytec's photo of the blimp is not a bad idea. In fact, I did it several years back, although I didn't have a space as spacious as a hollow core door. I built a US Naval Air Station for blimps (based on a Hitchcock, TX prototype) on a 2 foot by 3 foot layout.


The helium tankcars were loaded in...the Panhandle.

 

All them cotton seeds need to be transported to somewhere from the gin; 1.54 LB seed per 1 LB lint in perfection; more like 2:1 rough. Typically trucks take away the lint and the seed/linters can go elsewhere by rail. A cotton gin can be a good rural industry that takes away four or five cars of seed per day. The cotton seed needs to be protected in covered hoppers. Good to ship the seeds from the gin to the mill.