What era do you plan to model? Industries come and go, and it's helpful to decide not only where your railroad is, but also when.
For example, Wilmington has river access to Delaware Bay, and then to the Atlantic. What sort of fish might be caught there? Do they have crabs, like in Chesapeake Bay a bit further south? Or, is your layout in the 1990's, and the factory trawlers from Russia and Japan have taken all the fish, so that industry has dried up?
Across the river, southern New Jersey was known for farmland, before it became suburbanized. So, you might have some seasonal transfer points for fruits and vegetables.
Fish, fruit and vegetables will keep better if they're cold. Nowadays, they go in mechanically-cooled refrigerator cars, but back in the first half of the 20th century, they were kept cool in ice-bunker reefers. These had to be re-stocked with ice every couple of hundred miles, so if that's your timeframe, then think about an icing station, not just for the locally-packed products, but as a stopover for foodstuffs from the Deep South and Wild, Wild West on their way north to New York and Boston.
A long time ago, breweries were common in every city. Then, they all fell victim to the competition of the mega-brewers, but now you can find new microbreweries springing up to once again produce local and regional beers.
Right now, I'm kind of on a car float kick. Walthers is going to restart production of their car float, long discontinued, so I've been thinking about that all day. Consider a car float to take cars across the river and back. It's an interesting "industry" that combines interchange with switching, and has some neat scenery to boot.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
During the 50's, in my old hometown in upstate NY, we had:
1. A small basket factory. Most farm produce was shipped in wood bushel baskets. The factory was beside the O & W RR tracks with a pond out back (they took water from a nearby creek) to hold the logs. When they were ready they put the wet logs into hot water, split them into thin slats, formed the baskets, stapled them together, stacked them (they "nested" nicely) on the loading dock and eventually put them into a boxcar for shipment.
2. A coal yard with a covered trestle (looked like a covered bridge on stilts). The RR would deliver the hoppers by pushing them up the ramped trestle and into the level covered portion where the coal could be kept dry and eventually dumped through the openings in the deck to the waiting trucks below for delivery around town. Most of the homes in town and the university burned anthracite for heat.
3. Many communities had a trackside "milk plant" or "milk station" where the large cans of milk were collected from all the nearby dairy farms, kept cold and loaded onto refers for swift travel to the big city. They usually had a loading dock on both sides of the building.
Good luck with the layout.
Here is a little tidbit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philadelphia,_Wilmington_and_Baltimore_Railroad
I model the Wilmington & Northern branch of the Reading, used to do 1950's, now do 1900-1905.
Wilmington had a lot of leather goods factories, machine shops, boat/ship building, railcar manufacturing and chemical plants. Also in the area, primarily along the Brandywine were cotton mills and textile mills. The Reading had a car ferry to Carney's Point, NJ and served a Dupont chemical factory there. The Dupont plant outside Wilmington made gunpowder (now the Hagley Museum and Library) and the one in NJ made dynamite if I remember correctly. There were also a fertilizer plant, a railcar wheel plant and numerous lumber and coal yards.
If you need specific industry names, give me an era and I can provide some.
Dave H.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
I thought Brandywine made Ammunition since Colonial Times. Cannonballs and such?
Someone correct me if Im wrong.
There is an old article from MR that suggests the easiest way to model a fireworks factory (or ammunition plant - Norfolk Naval Base is not all that far from Delaware) is to lay a spur, build a hill - taller than your rolling stock - inside the frog, and put a fence along the top of the hill. A big sign on the fence says "Kaboom Fireworks KEEP FAR AWAY". Fancy version has some sort of guard shack and a gate across the tracks. You push a few boxcars up the spur and leave them there; later another train can come along and pick them up, now full of fireworks / ammunition.
You may want to update the article by putting a distant shot of a generic factory on the backdrop.
Pusey & Jones - Ship building
Bethlehem Ship Building, Harlan Plant - Ship Building
Super Phosphate - Fertilizer
Lobdell Car Wheel Co. - railroad car wheels
Swift Co. - Inbound meat
DuPont Engineering, Wilmington Shop - machinery
Amalgamated Leather Co.
Lindsey Kent Lumber Yard
Peerless Co. - plaster
Wilmington Coal and Coke Co. - inbound coal
Penn Seaboard Steel Corp. - steel castings
Ammerican Manganese Steel co. - steel castings
The Pyrites Co. Ltd.
Wilmington Marine Terminal
The Tannin Corp - tanning chemicals
J. Frank Darling - floor coverings
Cork Insulation Co.
Richmond Radiator Co.
Wilmington Enameling Co. - patent leather
Diamond State Iron
FF Slocomb Co. - machinery
Hilles & Jones - boilers, machinery
J. Bancroft & Sons - textiles
Smith & Painter - make fruit syrups
William Lea & Sons - textiles
Last Chance wrote: I thought Brandywine made Ammunition since Colonial Times.
They made gunpowder and blasting powder, not cannonballs. Some of the gunpowder was put into cannonballs but not at the Brandywine plant.
Thank you for correction. Much helpful.
Up until about the mid-1950s Pullman Company had a car shop in Wilmington. It was fairly compact, taking up only a couple city blocks. It had a transfer table and was clearly visible from the PRR mainline, just north of the Brandywine Moveable Bridge. With some selective compression it would be an interesting model for somebody who likes Pullman cars. Most of the buildings are still standing.
Just south of the Brandywine bridge was Jackson & Sharp Delaware Car Works, builders of railroad and streetcars. IINM they were taken over by ACF and built landing craft during WWII. By the 1950s their plant had become the Wilmington Industrial Park. ACF had their own shifter, a Plymouth, which was kept by WIP until it was sold to the Wilmington & Western around the mid-1960s. Some of the buildings are still standing.
When I was a teenage HO Scaler, with money was saved from my paper route, and 2 years worth of Model Railroaders back-issues from 1960-1965 were purchased. These issues are still in my library.
There are a lot of industries in those magazines appropriate to your desired era.
For example, I remember a pickle factory with a couple outdoor vats, and then a re-creation of that pickle industry was in a recent Model Railroader referencing that scratchbuilder's plan.
eBay would have these 1960s era Model Railroader mags come up from time to time.
Do you remember the 3-5 story steel girder buildings, with those girders covered in concrete, and the building's walls bricked in between each of those vertical & horizontal girders?
Other types of railroad industries with semi-functioning buildings of the era would be REA - Railway Express (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_Express), and branch freight-only platforms such as a Baltimore & Ohio freight depot.
Many traction companies were beginning to phase out in the 1950s, but power substations were still seen, and carbarns were being converted to overhead trolly bus and diesel bus repair facilities.
To get you started to locate resources on this website:
Here's a link to Books & Special Issues => The Model Train Magazine Index...
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?L=1&tmpl=tm_book
The index for 1950-1969 Model Railroaders...
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=M&proc=MR&view=50&text=1950-1969
Sample search => pickle...
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=S&cmdtext=pickle&MAG=MR
February 1961 M.R. => "A factory for those pickle cars"...
http://index.mrmag.com/tm.exe?opt=I&MAG=MR&MO=2&YR=1961&output=3&sort=A
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
Here is a building that was partially completed after several months of conception, planning and work at the bench. There is much still to do like adding a loading dock, signage, canopy etc etc etc.
I did not follow a specific prototype but I did follow a thinking that a building that ships and recieves from Model Railroad cars ought to be big enough to LOOK capable of holding several loads worth.
http://img511.imageshack.us/img511/8545/shippingbuildingan8.jpg
It is long enough to serve 4 50 foot boxcars or three 89 foot autoparts cars. There is much to do because the paint is a little bit off along with gaps to seal. At the end of the day it's going to be a focal shipping building on my small industrial layout.
I built it using left over modulars from Walthers. It isnt a pretty picture complete with scenery, track, people etc... not yet.
But one day soon it will be complete.
DSO17 wrote: Up until about the mid-1950s Pullman Company had a car shop in Wilmington. It was fairly compact, taking up only a couple city blocks. It had a transfer table and was clearly visible from the PRR mainline, just north of the Brandywine Moveable Bridge. With some selective compression it would be an interesting model for somebody who likes Pullman cars. Most of the buildings are still standing.
Sounds like a good spot for the new Walthers transfer table & their various shop buildings!!
http://www.walthers.com/exec/page/rail_shops
BTW a good "industry" on a small-medium size layout is an interchange track. Just about any type of car can go there, and you don't need any buildings - you basically just need a spur track connecting to your mainline.
An overhead view of the former Pullman Shops can be seen at 1204 E 12th St Wilmington DE 19802 on Google Maps satellite view. The shops were bounded by the PRR (now Amtrak NEC), East 12th St, and Rosemont Ave. The transfer table was in the open area that has some semi-trailers in it across the NEC from East 11th St and Pullman Place.
Speaking of transfer tables the Amtrak (former PRR) Shops about 1/2 mile north of this location still has a transfer table.