What industries do you model and why? What are your loads in and out and the cars that are used?
This is intended to help modelers (and me) decide on what industries they may be able to use on their own layouts. (Got the idea from the Old Dog's thread. Sorry.)
Elmer.
The above is my opinion, from an active and experienced Model Railroader in N scale and HO since 1961.
(Modeling Freelance, Eastern US, HO scale, in 1962, with NCE DCC for locomotive control and a stand alone LocoNet for block detection and signals.) http://waynes-trains.com/ at home, and N scale at the Club.
Coal - I've got a bunch of old Mantua clamshell-door operating hoppers, and a building that will load the coal as well. Kind of a gimmicky thing, but it's still kind of neat to load and unload coal.
Hogs - I squeezed a small stockyard into a corner next to an old Suydam Swift packing plant. I put some hogs into the stockyard because I picked up a couple of double-decked stock cars.
Beer - I put in a brewery to give me another siding to switch. This goes with...
Ice - It's not assembled yet, but I've got a Walthers icing platform for my ice-bunker reefers. This gives me a multi-stop industry that can serve both the brewery and the packing plant, plus en-route traffic.
Oil - I've got a small fuel-oil dealer with some tanks on a siding where I can spot tankers.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Region and era have a lot to do with appropriate industries to be served.
In my case, coastal Southern Oregon in 1900 means:
- logging from forest to sawmill, sawmill to port for loading on to ships, sawmill to local users in each town
- fish processing from the fishing fleet. Salmon would be primary, salmon was canned, and then shipped east for consumption, or shipped via ship's cargo. Some salmon would be kept fresh and go out via iced reefer.
- livestock, hay, grain in the valleys slightly inland. A mill would be required for processing the grain. Meat packing done either locally or livestock shipped to Chicago.
- coal and wood were the dominant fuels for heating and machinery, with coal being preferred. Coal was available in the Roseburg area, so would come west.
- lots of support industries. Ice storage, since ice could not be produced locally. Ice would be brought in from the Cascades. Smiths, machine shops and carpenters were needed to sharpen saw blades, dress mill stones, repair machinery, make wagons and wheels, shoe horses, repair/replace ships and ships' rigging, fishing nets, etc. Local infrastructure was critical to a town's success due to the relatively high cost of transportation in those days.
Because local infrastructure was critical, almost every agricultural center in 1900 would have rail service, a lumber supply (and sawmill if the timber supply was local), coal dealer, ice storage, grain mill, and associated support shops. Anything not produced locally would come in by rail from the east, or by ship into port.
This gives me the traffic patterns and reasons for my railroad(s). I will then select industries to be actually modeled from the above.
just my thoughts
Fred W
I have a coal mine (Sentinel Coal) and will eventually have a sawmill. Logging occurs up in the hills above Seneca Falls, but I haven't included those operations. The tracks to my off-layout staging represent them, with the sawmill amazingly synergistically astride the line as it meets my main back on the layout. I also have a foundry and rolling stock manufacturing facility on a small curved spur on the interchange. I think I done good for what is plainly a roundy-round railfanning central pit layout.
-Crandell
My industries:
A drilling/mining machinery foundry, recieves coal, pig iron, steel, ships machinery and castings.
A combination feed mill and coal yard, recieves feed, coal.
A quarry, ships aggregate (crushed rock, ballast)
A shipyard, recieves lumber, steel, boilers, misc parts.
A fertilizer/nitrate plant, ships fertilizer, potassium nitrate.
A textile mill, recieves cotton, ships textiles
A boiler works, recieves steel and iron, ships boilers
A iron/steel mill, recieves ore, coal, limestone, ships iron and steel.
A cider press, ships cider and apples.
A gunpowder works, recieves nitrates, sulphur and charcoal, ships gunpowder.
A coal yard, recieves coal and lumber
Several freight houses and team tracks
Why do I have those industries? Because they were on my chosen railroad in 1900, my chosen era Based on my research, most of the industries will even have the "correct" names (FM Brown and Sons, Harlan and Hollinsworth, Dyer Quarry, Super Phosphate, Lukens Steel, E.I. Dupont, etc). I found the industries by looking at old maps, finding shippers guides, looking at history books, reading railroad magazines (those produced by the railroads themselves) and researching the companies and processes themselves.
I will have several more (another foundry or two, furniture factory/wagon works, coal yards, lumber yards, feed mills, another quarry, etc) that I haven't firmed up the plans yet, all of which will be based on actual industries or at least typical of the area.
In addition, I will have a lead that will represent the line to a car ferry that will run to another explosives and chemical plant (Pigeon Pt., DE to Carney's Pt., NJ, also on the prototype) and at least 3 interchanges (B&O, PRR).
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Coal, two ways:
Forest products, mostly cedar:
Miscellaneous (foodstuffs, fresh and packaged; petroleum products; furniture; drygoods...) delivered in appropriate cars to freight houses and team tracks for local consumption. The JNR freight house at Tomikawa is a break-bulk point.
'Used in production' products (small-section rail, structural steel, mine cars, explosives...) delivered to the stores siding of the larger mine.
Heavy electrical equipment and cement transloaded to the Harukawa Dentetsu for the major hydroelectric project up the (probably won't be modeled) Harukawa Gorge.
Within a few years most of this traffic will dry up, but not until the roads are improved...
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Coke Retort - Primary starting point for Coal Gas to "light" my town. Results in Coal Tar that the adjacent Chemical Plant renders into...whatever. Takes in coal and tanker cars outputs tanker and boxcars and loaded coke hoppers.
Sawmill - Logs go in lumber comes out. Gives me spine cars and loaded flat and box cars.
Icing Plant - Midpoint reicing plant. Don't have to worry about destinations so much as cars that need to be reiced between Points A and B. Easy for me to model as I have both the Wisconsin River and the Fox River to pull ice from
Dairy - Express and Dairy reefers in Reefers out
Brewery - Hoppers et al in Reefers and Box Cars out
Canning Plant - Open top hoppers, box cars in box cars out, coal cars in empties out
Glass Plant - this is a maybe, not sure yet if I want to do this one. Mainly because I don't know how glass was shipped in the 30's. Possible loads would be sand, coal (for the power plant), and tin (again not sure how this would be shipped)
Tractor Impelment dealer/Seed Dealer with team track - Anchors a part of one of my towns.
There will be others, but these are the ones that have purchased at the moment.
Transload center, team or RIP track, cement plant.
You can spot anything on a RIP track, including cars that you have no customer for on your layout. You can spot almost anything on a x-load or team track.
Cement plant b/c I need a place to spot those 2-bay and aggregate hoppers, although there is a small yard near me where BNSF leaves cuts of 2-bays. Haven't figured out yet why they leave them there though.
Dr. Frankendiesel aka Scott Running BearSpace Mouse for president!15 year veteran fire fighterCollector of Apple //e'sRunning Bear EnterprisesHistory Channel Club life member.beatus homo qui invenit sapientiam
What a bunch of great replies! I think all industry is intersting - a symbol of a strong economy in our miniature empires; lots of jobs, lots of products, lots of rail traffic.
I tend towards industry in the 1970s - 1990s, and think pulp and paper mills are extremely intersting, challenging to model, and provide a lot of diversity in rail traffic (wood chips, chemicals and possibly fuel oil coming in using hoppers and tank cars; finished paper or pulp coming out in box cars.) The modeling possibilities are almost endless - lots of lights for nightime operation, sound simulators for the wide range of steam, motors, blowers, and other systems at work, smoke generators or steam simulators, operating conveyor belts, bulldozers, forklifts, etc. etc. I could probably spend 10 years modeling a paper mill and easily use two 4 x 8 tables to do it in HO scale.
I also agree, however, with every other post here. Coal is just as interesting and as important (or more so) as an industry. Various livestock operations lend themselves to great detail modeling. Produce like fruit and grain also offers great opportunities to show the strength of a nation by the people it can feed (and the food it can move!) Steel looks very impressive and intersting as well. Give me 10 years and a 10,000 square foot layout room!!
Modeling the Motor City
With several layouts under my belt in 40 some years of the hobby, and a new one abuilding, the plan is as follows:
Since I will model the Southern Pacific in the Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains, my industries will include the massive sand business in that area, associated cement businesses, wineries, fruit packing houses and processors such as Contadina and Del Monte and businesses of a local flavor such as a fuel distributor, two lumber yards, several team tracks, and an unusual business known by locals as the Apricot Pit, a place where apricot shells were ground up and processed for the oils' use in various cosmetics and national branded facial creams.
The sand and cement business uses covered hoppers and hoppers both inbound and out; the fruit packers will take refrigerator cars in as empties and out with loads, some boxcars and the occasional gon for scrap; the fuel distributor will of course see tank cars and the lumber yards will get flatcars and the occasional boxcar. The apricot pit got its shells via truck; outbound loads of oils were shipped in tank cars and 40 foot boxcars.
Ive always liked the B&O with some very heavy WM, Ma and Pa, PRR, Southern and EBT influence. I keep three different time periods. One pre ww1, one post ww2 and one chessie era for anything 1965 on to the 80's If I was to get into CSX? Well, it may not happen anytime soon.
I freelance my road as if it was a division of the B&O and try to keep things rather simple with no fixed reference to real life location. I run this road for me and maybe someday for others to visit and operate as a crew when sufficiently finished.
With that said here is the industrial matrix I have so far.
Falls Valley
Team Track.
a- Crane
b- Platform
c- Conveyor availible for material like rock, sand, coal etc.
d- pump shack for tanker to tractor trailer either air or fluid transfer.
Let's say I dont have room to model a full town right now. This team track recieves loads like... a new Cat Road Grader off a flatcar to a local construction company busy building a road "Off layout"
Or it can ship furnature like a sofa into a LCL boxcar or several peices at once without having to model a furnature factory. The local trucking company will take care of the team track transfer freight and provide me with a variety of loads in or out (Or both) Like News print rolls and a few hours later news papers out of the LCL warehouse nearby.
Cold Storage- Perishables of all kinds down to zero degrees. Has a ice rack to handle reefers as well.
Warehouse. That shipment of dutch made brooms will take a while to sell as people need them for the season. Need a place to store it until the store in town puts in a order for a few more.
Creamery. Milk tanker cars come in early in the morning and fill from farmers bring cans of raw milk. Eventually that milk car goes to the big city to be turned into milk, butter etc and to be cleaned.
Feed mill. I dont have too much specfic for it, the best I can do is bring in molasses that has been used up at Dominos in Baltimore and turn it to bagged feed for live stock. It will do until I expand the product line.
Oil depot and Coal dealer. Self explanitory. I do have a tanker truck and a few dumps availible to pretend to move the fluids and coal to various customers from industry to homes not modeled on the layout. Even a little bit of pressure natural gas; I used some walmart vision dome magnifiers painted silver for semi buried tanks to save on space.
Power plant with a oil back up. This industry makes use of spare modulars and recieve coal cars and tank cars of fuel oil as a backup fuel. When the water level is too low on the hydro dam in another part of the area the plant picks up the slack. Not too busy but fairly constant work.
One ball bearing industry. takes in coils, rounds and other items and ships completed bearings ranging from those used in cars, trucks, aircraft propellers to big 10 foot rings used in cranes, shipyards and such. Not exactly finished yet but relies on the town's existing rail service to fill in gaps in the inbounds and outs.
It sort of has a stake in a little something of ownership of half the town, other businesses etc to ensure it's continued survival as a colossus of make believe manufactoring.
The real reason is I wanted a industry that can be switched when the mood strikes. =) As if the town isnt enough work already.
I have a mine. Until I find a spot for that mine, I cannot do anything yet. But I know that there will be about 12 hopper cars of various grades of coal generated daily. some of those cars will be used locally and a few gets interchanged out.
Going to be interesting when the local is confronted with the mine turn hogging the track with a passenger train due in 20 minutes. My problem is a triple track lap siding, a tower and associated scheduling is enough to bring a strong man down to his knees when all three trains meet in the same corner.
That is it for the industry situation on my road. I know the post is a bit long but most of the buildings sit on the in-progress benchwork seeking final placement.
Most of the rolling stock is in captive service some will be floaters that might show up one session and not be seen again for the next three depending on how the car cards work out.
Finally, there is always bridge traffic. Freight going through going somewhere else without stopping. The biggest are the auto parts in the big 86 foot boxcars. When those show up, well... inhale and pull that gut in as they pass by.
After getting all of this to work, scenery goes in; THAT is going to take some time. The future expansion will require the railroad to be in a state of mobility until moved to it's final space.
Rexam Plastics makes various gadgets made out of plastic. Receives plastic pellets in large covered hoppers, various chemicals in tank cars, packing materials by boxcars. Ships pallets of boxed finished products in boxcars (and by truck).
Crown cork & seal manufactures bottle caps and other packaging materials. They receive aluminum sheets, cork sheets, plastic, glue and materials for labeling/packing & distributing their products. Ships pallets of boxed finished products in boxcars (and by truck)
Menasha paper packaging makes flatpacked cardboard boxes for other industries. Receives various types of paper and cardboard in boxcars, ships pallets of flatpacked cardboard boxes by boxcar (and by truck).
Progressive Rail warehouse, Wausau Supply Co and Ryt Way distribution all receves boxcars of pallets of boxed products on pallets that are stored temporily inside their warehouses for further distribution locally by truck. Progressive Rail's warehouse also loads and ships various products for customers - packaged stuff on pallets in boxcars, and agricultural machinery on flatcars.
ISG resources team track receives tank cars that are unloaded directly into tank trucks by portable pumps, centerbeam cars with lumber products for the building trade, hoppers of sand and bark (for landscaping) that are unloaded into a pit under the track and lifted out into piles by a conveyor belt, flatcars of machinery that are unloaded by a contractor with a portable crane that is hired when needed.
Twin City Brick Co receives bricks on pallets in boxcars, distributes by trucks.
Poly Tech pipe co receives metal and plastic pipe on flatcars and in gondolas.
ChemCentral receives various chemicals in tank cars, unloads into storage tanks. Distrbutes from storage tanks by tank truck to various local industries.
Cloverleaf Cold Storage receives reefers with chilled/frozen goods. I might swap out this last industry for a flour mill - which would then receive grain of various kinds in covered hoppers, and possibly ship packed flour in boxes on pallets in boxcars.
Why I picked these industries ? Because they (with the exception of the potensial flour mill) were on my prototype around 2002. But I picked my prototype (a logistics park type of place on the outskirts of the Twin Cities) because I wanted a place that:
a) mostly would receive closed cars (boxcars, covered hoppers, tank cars), so I wouldn't have to mess too much with unloading/loading visible loads, yet give me the opertunity to run other cars when I wanted to, and
b) would need frequent switching. So in addition to my 11 industries, which each can hold 2-4 railroad cars, I also have three longer holding tracks distributed throughout the industrial park, so I can switch cars between the industries and the holding tracks during the day.
And I can model interchange with another railroad - by starting my session with a cut of cars that has arrived from the other railroad on the "mainline" down the spine of the industrial park and end the session with an outbound train waiting to be picked up by the other railroad.
Smile, Stein
I've made for my rr a list
http://www.westportterminal.de/wtindustries.html
Wolfgang
Pueblo & Salt Lake RR
Come to us http://www.westportterminal.de my videos my blog
My list of industries is more or less dictated by the prototype (C&O Hawks Nest Branch) being modeled:
3 Coal tipplesGrocery Supply WarehouseTeam Track - mostly for pulpwood loadingLCL at station
There's enough traffic for 4 daily trains (2 mine run, 2 local mixed freight) on the branch, plus 4 through trains on the main below.
Charles
I'm keeping mine simple, and based on what I know from where I grew up...along the tracks through a small midwest town...
I wish I had room for another industry....maybe something like a grocery/produce warehouse....but I don't.
Reality...an interesting concept with no successful applications, that should always be accompanied by a "Do not try this at home" warning.
Hundreds of years from now, it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...But the world may be different because I did something so bafflingly crazy that my ruins become a tourist attraction.
"Oooh...ahhhh...that's how this all starts...but then there's running...and screaming..."
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
SpaceMouse wrote:For the most part, the region determines the industry.
Partially true, but there are many industries that can be found in any region, for example, a bulk oil dealer or a grocery wholesaler.
Also note that some industries vary by climate. Coal yards and fuel oil dealers would be move common in the north then south.
Have fun
The centerpiece of my layout is a paper mill complex, modeled loosely after an article published in MR several years ago by Paul Dolkos "Working the Mill Job". I was impressed with the variety and volume of traffic generated by his mill, which was located on a fairly small corner of the layout.
While Paul's industry is mostly "in the aisle" and represented only by sidings and a couple of buildings (How you HO guys must suffer!) I was able to do a fairly representative complex in N scale. It occupies an area roughly 18" x 36" and includes a pulp processing building, a power plant, the main mill building and a shipping warehouse. It's still extremely compressed compared to the Westvaco plant at Luke, Maryland that it represents, but there's enough room to switch upwards of 25 to 30 cars during an operating session.
Lee
Route of the Alpha Jets www.wmrywesternlines.net
No suffering here in HO, you might be standing in my heat shop which might be located in the walkway.
Now what I find impressive is the total number of spots in my industry list. Some are takers and others shippers. Maybe a few take and give.
I found a 1907 self-promotional book by the Ft Wayne Commercial Club (roughly a Chamber of Commerce) and listed everything in there. This gave me about 2 pages of small print worth of prototypes. I picked the interesting ones that matched the cars I had already bought, then went looking for cars to fit my chosen customers.
- Piano factory (my wife is a musician): uses a wide-door 40' boxcar and a high-cube 50-ft outside-braced boxcar to ship more than 1 piano at a time. (The 50-footer might become the subject of a "Just for Beginners" article given the repaint and re-decal work I had to do.)
- Coal dealer: I bought a kit for one because in 1900, anyplace could use it. I was SO happy when Westerfield brought out their PRR type GG hopper car ... until I saw the price (ouch).
- Meat packer: I bought a few cheap reefers and stock cars for the kids to play with. Gives them someplace to go.
- Pickle plant: This just sounds like fun, and I can convert an Olde-Tyme water tank car into a functional pickle-tank car with a roof and billboard sides.
- Wholesale grocer: gives me someplace for vented boxcars and reefers to go. If I ever find an IC vented box, the waybill will say 'Chiquita bananas' for cargo
- Fertilizer plant: When I was a kid, I bought a half-dozen old tank car kits. A few years ago, my parents found some of them. I picked them up before they could disappear again. Then I needed someplace that would use them.
- Interchange track: this false industry sounds more impressive than 'I pick half the cars off the track and put them in a box for a while'
Future expansions: (1) an LCL / team track facility. Allows me to use some industries like the Cigar Maker or the Typewriter Factory that would not want a whole boxcar at a time. (2) Expand interchange with tracks for different railroads in town: Grand Rapids & Indiana (PRR affiliate), Pittsburgh Fort Wayne & Chicago (also PRR affiliate), WAB, NKP, Fort Wayne & Jackson (NYC affiliate), Findlay Fort Wayne & Western (B&O affiliate), Lake Erie & Western, also nearby 'Cloverleaf' (Toledo St Louis & Western).
I found a spot for the coal mine and am testing a 2% incline set to reach it. because this will be a source of traffic for much of the railroad, the other industries will take a sort of side trip.
When you reduce your industries to fit the availible space giving up nothing you will end up with a certain amount of work to do with your railroad without trying to stuff alot into a insufficient space.
I dont have room for a power plant, however a short interchange track connects outside of the layout to one.
Here's a listing of my layout industries:
http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.com/Operations.htm
Clicking on any underlined town name will take you to a detailed listing of each town's industries, including what is received and what is shipped, and where it's going to / coming from.
The reason I chose these industries is simple - they're the industries that were there in real life!
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
I am building a layout representing the Santa Fe in the middle 1950s in "Karankawa", my version of the island seaport of Galveston, Texas.
The port itself is the largest industry, with the heaviest traffic in import and export, and support of the port, very little non-port-related manufacturing and only a modest amount of consumer-oriented distribution traffic.
Export traffic is "inbound" as far as railroad is concerned, outbound for ships.
Solid trains of grain, 2 a day, roll to the export grain elevator from north Texas and the plains states, mostly in 40' boxcars in the 1950s.
Prototype photo.
Plus some flour going to export, bagged in boxcars and bulk in Airslide® covered hoppers.
A heavy cotton traffic flows to Karankawa Compress in boxcars from the eastern half of Texas and the Panhandle. A lesser boxcar traffic in wool and mohair comes from the Edwards Plateau. Galveston was once the top exporter of sulphur and I was to model some of that. Santa Fe used special corrosion-resistant gondolas that require scratchbuilding.
I have built two, and have raw material, want to have a string of 6 or 8 cars. "Karankawa" is not exactly Galveston so I can fudge a little.
Some oilfield pipe and oilfield equipment is shipped out to offshore and overseas customers. You might think a Texas port would export petroleum, but the petroleum traffic was at Texas City. I call it the (unmodeled) city of Tidelands on my railroad.
Outbound port-related traffic is heavy on imported tropical agricultural products. The Santa Fe ran solid reefer blocks north when the once-a-week banana ship came in from Central America.
Layout is not running yet but I staged a photo of a banana train leaving the island via the long stone-arched causeway.
Other tropical import traffic includes coffee beans, raw sugar, jute (in 1950s the world's cheapest fiber, used for gunny sacks, etc.), and some exotic woods such as mahogany logs.
Despite Texas being cow country, the port imported beef from Argentina and elsewhere. Meat companies had leased space inside portside ice manufacturing plants. I will operate some Swift reefers.
Near the ice plants, Galveston has what it calls the "Mosquito Fleet", the little shrimpboats and fishing boats. I will use Santa Fe's special 50' superinsulated reefers for frozen fish and shrimp.
Port-related support traffic:
gunny-sack and paper bagging to the export grain elevator;
gunny baling fabric and baling wire to the compress;
cresosote treated piling to the port warehouse and Corps of Engineers for maintenance;
cooperage (crating supplies for shipping) to port warehouse;
wholesale lot canned food in boxcars & produce in reefers to shipchandler;
gravel and heavy stone rip-rap for jetty maintenance;
industrial gases in Linde and NCG "box-tankcars";
ammonia and other refrigerants to the portside ice plant and the brewery;
Santa Fe company-service ice cars from outside when local ice needs exceed icemaking capacity; intown shuttle of ice cars from the brewery where Santa Fe buys ice to the ATSF reefer icing dock (no on-site icemaking)
Santa Fe company-service "refrigerator-standards" salt boxcars for reefer salt;
I would like a special dry-ice refrigerator car but will have to scratch it.
Other Karankawa industrial traffic:
steel plate and extrusions to a shipbuilding yard.
Grain, hops, bottles and paperboard boxes to a brewery, and beer outbound.
Oystershell was dredged from the bay and shipped out in drop-bottom gondolas to cement plants.
Then there is the routine inbound traffic for the consumer needs of a small city: groceries and produce, automobiles, petroleum, furniture, appliances, LCL.
A trickle of traffic that for some reason comes into the Island Seaport on long-distance through freights only to be backhauled to the first town in on the mainland... helium cars for the Navy blimp base, a special carbon-black covered hopper, stock cars. Oh, all right, I'll tell you the reason. It is the only way I can justify seeing the interesting cars on my layout.
Is this enough industry and traffic for an 11' x 11' N scale shelf layout?
Thanks, Courage8.
As my layout expands to finish out the total plan, the Thomas Sub of the WM will provide much of the raw materials for the plant. I plan to include a sawmill that will generate pulpwood and chips, and several more coal sources.
Other industries that are on the current layout include a small cement terminal
and a scrap dealer at North Junction...
a Lumber Yard, feed mill and a small manufacturing plant at Ohiopyle,
Plus the service tracks at the engine terminal at Ridgely.