Need more industry ideas for my small PRR layout.

Great Uncle had a shoe making factory in Harrisburg up until the mid or late 40's

Flip

Since you are from Indiana; Why not a Brick Factory for one of your sidings???????   Kevin

No brick factorys as the layout wont be set in the state of Indiana, but the southern part of the state of Pennsylvania around the Harrisburg area.   The meat packing plant with the stock yard is one that is on the desired industry list.   Mike

In your era, ice-bunker reefers would still have been in common use for both the brewery and the packing plant.  A facility to ice down the reefers, such as the ice houses and elevated platforms from Walthers or J.L. Innovative, would be appropriate.  It would generate 2-stop traffic - first the ice platform, then the brewery or meat plant.  In addition, freights "just passing through" your layout would also need to stop over to re-ice their shipments while in transit.

The ice houses are pretty big, but you could scale the facility back by placing it against a back wall of your layout.

climaxpwr

No brick factorys as the layout wont be set in the state of Indiana, but the southern part of the state of Pennsylvania around the Harrisburg area. 

More brick plants around here back then than stock yards.  The steel industry consumed a lot of bricks, plus it was a common building material.  Not to say stock yards didn't exist.  I just saw one listed on the Conemaugh Division Indiana branch at MP 17.9.  There were still a lot of feed mills and oil refineries around back then too.  Glass was a common manufactured product in Western PA back then and I can think off hand where there were three different plants in the area north of Pittsburgh alone.  And in some place, salt plants.  I don't know how they operated, but they existed.   The PRRHS provides a wealth of primary source material about what was along the tracks everywhere. 

Thanks for the replys, my wife is from Lake City, PA orginaly and we lived in Fairview for 8 years, both of which are just west of Erie.  I want to do much more PRR railfanning while I lived out there, but constant job issues and lack of income prevented it.  But I have always been a big PRR fan.  So far I have been aquiring motive power and just starting on rolling stock.  Picked up a BLI/PCM I1sa Decapod with long distance tender, K4s with headlight up by the stack, but the slat pilot.  I am building a Bowser M1 Mountain kit.  Then I have an old Penn Line L1 Mikado that I have revamped and a freebie Bachmann prewar K4.  The local shop has a nice supply of older Bowser rolling stock kits, along with Athearn blue box, MDC, Accurail ect.   I have the track plan done up on paper, but not totaly to scale yet. One of the fellow members here in town is putting the plan to scale and we will see how much real room we have.  Thanks   Mike and Michele T

One thing to consider that will go well with your other industry is local coal sidings.  Just about every town along the line had a coal siding or two as home heating was by coal for most people back in the day.  Just to give you an idea, here in Mass. along the current NEC, there were private coal sidings in Attleboro, Mansfield, Foxboro, Sharon and Canton before you got to Boston (and Foxboro and Canton had 2 ea.).  Home heating coal was big business back in the day (especially in PA), and would go well with your engine facility coal service and coal mine.

Also, don't forget the East Broad Top also earned it's living from coal, and that's right in the southern PA area you're talking about.  Perhaps an HOn3 interchange?  Hmm...  If only Micro-Trains would make HOn3 coal hoppers for EBT...

Paul A. Cutler III
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Weather Or No Go New Haven
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I was thinking the same thing, actualy, home heating by coal is becoming the hot thing again, but with the bagged pellet coal now.  A buddy that lives in Pittsburg said its almost a 2 year wait to get one of the new whole house coal furnaces installed.  Up around Erie after the price of wood pellets shot way up, everybody started switching to coal fired free standing stoves.  Most all the bagged coal products I saw came from around the Pittsburg area.  The area I plan to put the small village and rural housing will have a coal siding.    Mike

If your looking south of Harrisburg, then agriculture would be a topic of interest in a big way.

Tom

A good choice for almost any locale, especially in your chosen era or earlier, is a team track.  It doesn't have to take up a lot of room, and can receive (and ship) almost any type of cars.

In its simplest form, all you need is a track and a place for trucks or wagons to park alongside:

A ramp, in wood or concrete, expands the possibilities, and allows loading/unloading of vehicles and farm machinery:

It can still be used for other commodities, too:

Add a portable elevator, and you can ship or receive coal, sand, and gravel:

If you have the room, add a small storage facility, which allows you to get those cars unloaded promptly, saving per diem charges:

Some team tracks even had their own crane:

Don't forget to include an office for the agent or attendant:

As suggested, a coal dealership could also be a good stand-alone industry, such as the one seen in the background above:

For a smaller town, something simpler would be in order and could also include a small icehouse, as shown in the third photo below.  These served local commercial and residential customers, and often had their ice delivered from elsewhere, in ice-service reefers:

Wayne

A couple of Western PA to Central PA industries would be anything iron & steel related, even mini-mills, manufacturing like Coleman Trailers or trucking parts, Caterpillar factory, Pittsburgh Plate Glass, and toward Chambersburg (huge peaches reputation) for fruit industries, Railway Express, etc.

One industry I'll include in my circa 1956 Pennsy layout interchanging with CR&T is a scratchbuilt Pickle Factory (02/1961 MR) -- While not forgetting Union Station passenger interchanges with CR&T's PCCs & Gas Electrics.

This part of forested Pennsylvania, as did Williamsport in Northcentral PA, had "portable lumber logging & sawmills" potentially interchanged by truck to rail.

Although "milk trans" were different than today, dairy was (still is) a big deal in Pennsylvania (Penn State was founded as an agricultural college -- not for Big Ten football).  Hersheys still needs milk today for chocolate production.

Also consider ice for refrigeration, team tracks for PRR TrucTrain (TrailerTrain flatcars), and; a siding for coal hopper side-spur to let off their loads by gravity into cement silos (actually built into the hillside) for coal truck pick-up directly below the siding.  Coal hoppers not only need coal towers to put coal into them, but places to deliver loads to trucks.

 For the early transition area, along PRR's main line I think there would have been a lot more manufacturing plants than mining/lumber activity.  (I'm in Philly and very familiar with what's between here and Harrisburg, and Allentown.  Cement plants tend to take up lots of space, farming supplies, machinery mfg, like industrial presses, lathes, etc., would have steel and iron coming in, interesting flatcar loads coming out. 

Pittsburgh had more than gigantic steel mills.  There were many specialized shops.  Blaw-Knox Equipment made many items for the construction industry. 

 Steel cement forms, cement carriers like the ones they used building Bolder Dam. automatic clamshell buckets and others. 

 They also made the famous diamond radio towers and steel grating.  Receiving steel plate and shapes by rail and shipping by rail. There is an industry that you could

breakdown and make one item.  You say no brickyard but in Freeport, Pa. they had a large brick plant and of course glass was very big.

One idea would be a tube mill where they made various length and size of steel tubing. Western Pennsylvania had a large variety of industry and don't forget the H. J. Heinz

plant.

Thanks for all the great ideas.  I know the industries around our area quite well, but other than a few major ones in PA state, I didnt.  Since it looks like my layout will have more of a PRR flavor over the other line I love (NKP)  I need to give it more of that flavor.  Although I can always get more Berkshires.  Mike

 I saw a wax paper factory listed on the Allegheny Branch of the Conemaugh Division in 1945.  So really if you can imagine it, it was probably in Pennsylvania.  The state was much further up the list in relative population back then (I want to say Pittsburgh peaked at fifth largest city around that time), so there was a lot more around.  And stuff like wax paper had to come from SOMEWHERE.

I actually live about 25 miles south of Pittsburgh on the Monongahela river and can see the old PRR tracks from my front yard.. its now NS and I hear the conforting sound of horns echo all the way up and down the valley....  I grew up not car from Pittsburgh and can still remember all the old mills - Homestead works, J&L South Side works, Mesta Machine, to name a few... all gone now.  Well, some of Mesta's stuff was bought out by Whemco, but I don't think they're in business anymore either.  Anyways, I digress....

 There were only a few major industries around here, glass, coal (for the mills, power plants, and general use as most houses had coal furnaces or fire places around 1850 through the early 1900's), steel and related, occasional brick foundries, and an occasional brewry. 

There were bricks actually fired near alot of towns, so that would not be uncommon for SW PA.

 There was not a whole lot of meat packing / farming type stuff... at least you never hear about it and everything I see left on the railroads points towards coal and steel related stuff.

  You could model a "small" machine shop as they were everywhere also... support for the mills mostly.

  Since you already have a coal mine, you could model a power plant... you need coal trains to power it and you can justify its existance to power your towns and a far off mill.

 Rusty Nail brought up a great point.  I am mostly familiar with south of Pittsburgh, which didn't have much beyond what I mentioned.

Another thing was American Bridge... they made... bridges! 

There was National Pipe and Tube which made pipe.

There even was a GM plant in operation until a couple of years ago!

So I guess I take back what I said in the last post about only a few things... Pittsburgh had most of everything industry related.  Not a ton of food other than Heinz and brewries (people love their beer around here!)

climaxpwr

I need some more ideas for online industry for my small PRR layout.  I have a coal mine with 2 leads to fill my PRR coal hoppers and a small engine facility that will recieve coal and sand hoppers.  I have 2 areas along the main I can lay in a siding for a small to medium industry.  I also have one corner I was thinking of a meat packing plant possibly, or a brewery.  Both would recieve and ship various items.  I have several PRR livestock cars so I was leaning towards the meat packing plant.  Livestock inbound, as well as boxes and other packing materials,  reefers outbound to market.  On the side of the layout opposite the coal mine  and just before reaching the engine facility lead switch, that I think a small single ended yard so I can work the enterchange coming from the local club or other members layouts. What small to medium industries were common to the PRR thru southern Pennsylvania?  I plan to keep the layout hilly like I would see down around the Pittsburg or Harrisburg area, but not recreating any area specificly.  Just a feel of the hilly southern PA state area.   I am more used to the flatlands of indiana, grain elevators, farm co-ops, fertilizer plants ect.   The era is the late 40's thru the early 50's with steam still in command and only a few diesels about. Motive power is I1sa Decapods, M1 Mountains and K4s's holding down the passenger trains. 

Some useful suggestions offered, but not all address the OP's request for small to medium industries for his small layout.  

Wayne

 Something I've learned because of this thread is that there used to be a lot of biscuit factories around these parts.

 And it just hit me that "National Biscuit Co." is Nabisco.

 The area between Harrisburg & Pittsburgh is largely "minerals" related. Coal, some iron ore-- though not really enough to really make those long "Lake Erie" drags unless you fudge a little, or else model the 40's-- which, come to think of it, you do. The ore was generally too expensive to extract, except for the war years when it was all about building liberty ships, come hell or high water, and the cost didn't matter. Coke, Sand, Gravel, Stone-- granite for sure, probably others-- metals / machining industries. Car and Truck manufacturing plants and parts suppliers-- especially Ford-- at least up until the 1930's. A Volkswagon plant in New Stanton from 1978 to 1987, outside your modeling era however. Railroad "rebuilders" in both Harrisburg and Pittsburgh-- and of course just down the way a bit from Altoona and the main PRR Juniata Locomotive works, still in use today. Iron and Steel support industries. Oil and Natural Gas wells, pumping and refinement industries. Lightweight to medium-weight manufacturing of all kinds, particularly around Harrisburg and Pittsburgh. Glass industries-- bottlemakers, particularly. FWIW, Somerset PA was the site of the "Whiskey Rebellion" you may have read about in history class. Plus also your typical grain, agricultural and feed industries too. Southwest PA's got them too.