Any kind of freight transfer facility would fit in and can be as small or as large as you want. It also would service many kinds of freight cars and trucks as well. It also can be made to fit into curved areas that don't always work with large rectangular buiildings. You have a lot of choices from all the suggestions so far. Good luck.
-Bob
PS: I am still working on industries to fit long narrow spaces on my layout. I have a monument fabricator (headstones) and a small auto supply store. The ideas keep coming and I have to sort them out. Just keep looking into the 'support' industries and trucking operations that go with it.
Life is what happens while you are making other plans!
Just a small shed; Track on one side for box car & one side for trucks.
So, I'll second what Mike said. You can put industries off the layout or on the backdrop, with just enough of it present to allow rail service.
The team track /freight house is a good idea.
Remember that tbis isn't Railroad Tycoon. It is not necessary to have the full industry string on your layout. Ship items to and from staging. Coal and oil dealers would get deliveries from sources out of town. Lumber and pulp wood could be shipped to an off-layout factory or paper mill. Milk might be delivered from an off-layout farm, or you could model the farm (just the house and barn, or part of it, and have the fields on the bacdrop. Milk is shipped to a dairy plant off layout. If you incorporate staging, the possibilities are endless.
Connecticut Valley Railroad A Branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford
"If you think you can do a thing or think you can't do a thing, you're right." -- Henry Ford
Think of the kinds of cars you like to run, and then consider which industries use them. Tankers imply oil, but also chemicals. Scrapyards go with gondolas. Large machinery looks good on flats, and boxcars go most anywhere. Refrigerator cars can go many places, and in earlier eras would require an icing platform either as part of the loading process or when it's just passing through.
I put a carfloat terminal on my layout. Any type of car can go in or out on it. If you're more pressed for space, consider an interchange track with another railroad.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
If you run diesels, a propane or LNG dealer is a good possibility. If you're space-constrained, your main storage tank could be underground, its presence given away by the pump house at one end and a J-shaped vent pipe (about six feet tall) at the other.
You can run a track behind a hill, with a water tank and a smokestack carrying the industry's name visible over the top. What's actually back there? GOOD question...
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Here's a bit of a different take on your question.
Why do you want small industries? Because that's the only thing that will fit? If so, then start thinking of small facilities that represent bigger industries that aren't quite on your layout, but are imaginatively right next to it. But you should avoid thinking the whole enchilada has to be on the layout for an industry to be plausible.
Some of the ideas already mentioned could fit, but there are others, plus ways that directly suggest bigger things that happen to be unseen. A good example on my layout are the loading racks for the oil refinery. They make up most of what's in 3D on the layout. But it also includes just a fenced corner of the plant itself, with a couple of storage tacks and some refinery columns and fixtures.
Think of what is on the layout as only the loading/unloading part of an industry and you'll be able to "fit" a lot more on the layout than it will physically hold.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
You could have a grain tower, an intermodal yard or a small wharehouse.
You didn't mention, but what era? Several of the items mentioned are good small town choices through the 50s into the 60s perhaps. Depending on the region of the country, for outbound shipment you could also have a sawmill (common in mountain areas), fruit & produce (apples) in season, vegetable cannery, or one that I find visually interesting, feldspar/kaolin (see for example the Yancey RR). A prototypically valid small town might have only one large shipper, such as the sawmill, or cannery, or feldspar loader, then perhaps 3-4 small businesses such as lumber yard, fuel oil, farm supply. Most of these small businesses won't receive cars at every movement, but they add some variety, while the main industry drives the town and most shipments in and out.
jim
mh1 A pulp wood or lumber loading area. All you need is a siding and two gondolas or flat cars for the loading.
A pulp wood or lumber loading area. All you need is a siding and two gondolas or flat cars for the loading.
Don't forget the log piles and front end loader with log forks.
Its a bit pricy but a very nice diecast Cat log front end loader in HO scale is avalable
To clearly identify the area as an industrial siding rather than a team track.
regards John
A team track is always good. You should have a freight station near the passenger station (the two could be combined also) - it could have it's own track. A box factory is another or a small cannery. A pickle plant is good. A furniture factory.
Good luck
Paul
Why small?
Why not two large industries with 2 or 3 car spots?
Small industries will work if you're using 40' cars other then that these modern cars dwarfs those tiny industries that looks more like they're truck served then rail served.
The Walthers Cornerstone oil dealership is far to small because of the storage tanks even 40' tank car seems to large.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Feed and Grain mills/dealers (Walthers Cornerstone?) and Small Oil Dealers (same manufacturer) are/were common in small towns. Small warehouse for a more "universal" industry? Kalmbach has a series of Industries Along the Tracks books that can be very helpful. Lumber yard (Atlas' small one) and pipe supplier (good opportunity for pipe loads on flat cars or in gondolas. Junk yards are fun too.
I'm sure others will post others...
Jim
Raised on the Erie Lackawanna Mainline- Supt. of the Black River Transfer & Terminal R.R.
Hello all, I have a smaller layout, Its basicly a figure 8 wrapped on a L (10' x 12' long thats varies 3'-4' deep ) shaped layout. On one side, in the center of the circle i have a nice little mountain area, not tall but I loved the mountain scene with some trees and a small tunnel. Ok that side very happy with!! Now the other side is my town which i'm starting, with no industries. Dont want coal, but what would be some smaller industries for my small mountain town?? The town side is the bigger side 4.5' x 6' area.. Ideas please....