How would you model a typically large industry or mining operation on a small layout without actually modelling the buildings or mine itself? Most rail served industries have massive structures that dwarf the railcars, but on a small layout those same buildings would overpower the scenery. Specifically I want to run some shorter (15-20 car) MN iron ore trains through the scenery and a reason to switch some of it's cars, but iron ore operations are huge.
Depict the industry itself on the backdrop with a painting, commercial backdrop, or prototype photo, and model just the car loader on the layout. We've done a couple articles about this technique that I can think of -- look up the Winter Hill and Eagle Mountain project railroads.
Or, do what I've seen a number of modelers do, and don't model the industry at all. Build a sneak-off track that disappears behind a line of trees and a low backdrop. Surround the entrance to that spur with a chain-link fence with a gate (having to stop and open the gate to service the spur is a prototypical operating procedure that helps lengthen the time it takes to do the switch job). If you have the space, model two spurs, one for receiving empties and one to stage loaded cars for pickup. Finally, add a sign on or just inside the fence that says what the industry is. Rail-served industries aren't always right up against the mainline, the way we often model them; industrial spurs can be quite long, especially on resource-extraction industries like yours that have to be built wherever the resource is. This method of modeling a large industry is not only space-saving, it's prototypical.
--Steven Otte, Model Railroader senior associate editorsotte@kalmbach.com
Typically modeling large industries can be done by modeling only the part, or side, with the railcar access, and the rest is done using back drop building flats, or a photo, as part of the back drop.
There are many ways you can do this.
One of my favorites is Mike Confalone's St Regis Paper Mill.
Mike.
PS. Steve posted while I typed. Excellent suggestions, and methods.
My You Tube
Thanks for those replies, I really really like the idea of the disappearing spur line (maybe to a hidden two track full/empty staging). That opened up a whole bunch of ideas!
Depending on how much space I could allocate to this, I could have a switcher pull out a few cars from the mine spur to a siding to be added on a longer train destined for the docks. An ore clasification yard was another thought, with raw ore sorted and sent to an off layout taconite plant and the pellets return to the yard for further sorting before heading to the docks.
Add in a car maintenance shop and a small local business or two for variety and it could actually look pretty proportional on a small layout.
Another idea, although it is not a huge industry in the case I know of, is where the unloading facility is at a distance from the structure. In my home town there was a plastic bag factory that was across the street from the very modest little metal box and pipe stand that held the means of unloading plastic pellets from CenterFlow hopper cars. I'll be modeling the structure but I wouldn't have to.
There are many sprawling industries where for security (and industrial espionage) reasons you have very little physical or visual access, and perhaps at most have a clear view of the main business office where there might be visitor parking. The real guts of the place is harder to see from public streets which is exactly how that business wants it. The Caterpillar factory in Peoria is a bit like that. From city streets you have no real concept of how huge it is because there are no streets anywhere near most of it (the bridge view from high over the Illinois River gives a fleeting view but you're going 45 mph and no parking allowed).
Another example would be a deep gravel pit. The rail car aspect to it is up above, so you might see a conveyor coming from the pit, and those huge (non highway) dump trucks bring up with product for transloading to rail or other trucks. You don't see the pit until you get closer.
Most ethanol plants have the rail aspects of the operation (ethanol tanks outbound, dried distiller's grain outbound, gasoline to denature the ethanol inbound) a bit of a distance from the real heart of the process. The trucks with corn loads get closer to the plant than rail does. A photo or painting on a backdrop as suggested by Steve is perfect for an ethanol plant because even a building flat is too close. You want to convey distance.
Dave Nelson
I run trains of pulpwood flat cars, loaded with pulpwood. I don't have a logging operation or papermill on the layout. I just say the source and destination are off the layout. Sounds perfectly logical to my visitors. Steve Otte's suggestions above all sound good to me.
Speaking of ore cars, I want to build up a train of them, because I think they look cool. I will make loads for them. I am kludging up an explanation for running an ore train on my Boston and Maine New Hampshire branchline layout. Right now I think I will invent a name for a mining company and letter the ore cars for the mining company rather than a railroad. There was some copper mining in NH long ago, it's gone now, but I can pretend it is still in operation. Again I will just run the ore train and say the mine is off layout somewhere. I spent some time going thru my collection of old MR and RMC mags looking for something on ore cars, say a Paintshop, or a kit bash or a scratch build article. All I found was a single article on painting and lettering which didn't tell me much that I didn't know. I found some useful photographs. Some of them show the air hoses mounted very high on the ends of the car, so high that a train man would have to pull himself up on the grab irons to reach them. Most of the photos show a brake rod and probably the train air line running the length of the car up above the frame. Call the B end of the car the head, then these two details are always on the right hand side of the car. Most of the photos show some 2 by 8 planks running around the top of the car to give it a little more capacity. Top side of these planks show lots of wear.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
On the New Haven's Greenbush Line, there was (and still is) an interchange with the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, MA. The line was double track at the time. The shipyard had it's own railroad, the Fore River Railroad, and they had a third parallel track next to the NH's mainline at East Braintree (with switches at both ends).The NH local freight would drop off a string of gons & flats loaded with steel and other large items for ship building on the 3rd track. The FRR would arrive via a branch connection that curved off from the end of this 3rd track, dropping off empties and picking up loads. Then it would return to the shipyard 2 miles away.
The point is that you can have a very large industry not visible from the mainline, and all you need is a siding and a line curving off into the backdrop to represent the connecting railroad and/or branch.
Hello All,
Great suggestions, just one caveat...
What if you don't have a backdrop?
My 4'x8' pike is a walk around.
the main industry is a coal loading facility set in the 1970s to the 1980s.
There is a 3% grade up to the coal "loading" platform and shed. Below the shed is a siding for the cars to "receive" the coal.
In reality I have a fleet of vintage Tyco 34-foot operating hoppers.
Eight (8) of these loaded hoppers move up the grade to the loading shed.
A single GP30 is at the head end while a GP30 A-B set act as helpers up the grade.
The track that activates the operating doors on the hoppers has an unloading ramp that will not allow a loco to pass over it.
Unloading is done by shoving the cars through a siding and over this track. The lead loco is cut loose and is spotted on the other side of the loading shed to pull the empties out and back onto the main track.
A fleet of 16 of these operating hopper cars passes on the siding below to receive the coal from the hoppers above.
The coal loading shed is a kitbashed Syudam model that sits over both the unloading siding and the main.
Because this is a tabletop there is no place under the pike for the booster. I kitbashed two (2) Walthers Northern Light & Power kits (# 933-3021) to cover the booster that sits on top.
This powerplant is coal-fired and fed directly from the mine.
From the coal loading/unloading shed there is a dual conveyor belt (Walthers Belt Conveyor #933-3149) that transports the coal over the tracks to the power plant.
The only actual structure that represents the vast coal mine is the small kitbashed loading/unloading structure.
Using conveyor belts to tie the shed into the power plant adds visual interest and gives the illusion of a larger mining complex without having to model the entire mining complex.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
dstarr Speaking of ore cars, I want to build up a train of them, because I think they look cool. I will make loads for them. I am kludging up an explanation for running an ore train on my Boston and Maine New Hampshire branchline layout.
Speaking of ore cars, I want to build up a train of them, because I think they look cool. I will make loads for them. I am kludging up an explanation for running an ore train on my Boston and Maine New Hampshire branchline layout.
I remember reading a post awhile back that someone had seen a train of those old worn out ore cars being used out east for transporting large or ground up scrap metal. Just an idea.
GASnBRASSSpecifically I want to run some shorter (15-20 car) MN iron ore trains through the scenery and a reason to switch some of it's cars, but iron ore operations are huge.
What you're describing in a "mine run" train. Modern taconite trains are often loaded as a unit on loop tracks. In the days of natural ore, railroads like Great Northern or the Missabe had large marshalling yards in the iron range, at places like Hibbing or Biwabik MN. Trains of around 30 empty cars with one engine and a caboose would go from the marshalling yards to the mining company yards, and drop off the empties and return with 30 or so loads. The loads would then be put together into the 100+ car long mainline ore trains headed to Duluth, Superior, or Two Harbors.
On a model railroad, a train of say an SD-9, 20 ore cars, and a caboose, would be a great representation of one of these 'mine run' trains.
BTW the mainline railroad didn't take the cars down into the mines, the mining company's engines did that. The cars could be exchanged at essentially an interchange yard.
In some cases, the raw ore would need processing / cleaning. In that case, the ore would be loaded by the mining company into side-dump cars in the mine. The cars would go in short cuts onto a high trestle where the ore would be dumped down into a processing plant like a 'sintering' plant where impurities would be removed. The railroad ore cars would be loaded on the side of the plant, with a yard for loads and empties. Although such plants were often large, it could be represented by a flat or even a photo backdrop.
Also, in some open pit mines, trucks hauled the ore up to the surface, where they dumped it into a loader (kinda like Walthers coal loader kit). Ore cars would be spotted under it to be loaded a few at a time.
wjstix What you're describing in a "mine run" train. Modern taconite trains are often loaded as a unit on loop tracks. In the days of natural ore, railroads like Great Northern or the Missabe had large marshalling yards in the iron range, at places like Hibbing or Biwabik MN. Trains of around 30 empty cars with one engine and a caboose would go from the marshalling yards to the mining company yards, and drop off the empties and return with 30 or so loads. The loads would then be put together into the 100+ car long mainline ore trains headed to Duluth, Superior, or Two Harbors. On a model railroad, a train of say an SD-9, 20 ore cars, and a caboose, would be a great representation of one of these 'mine run' trains.
That's some great info, thanks! I've tried to research how iron ore freight is moved around but little details like that are hard to come by. I want to model a shared GN/DMIR branch line during the transition to taconite. The GN local freight traffic is easy to model, the bottleneck has been finding a believable reason for shuttling strings of ore cars short distances on a small layout where everything is greatly compressed. My curves are going to be sharp (18") so I'm limited to four axle Alco's, GP's and SW's. Did the DMIR SW's ever run short strings or were they strictly yard work?
The easiest way is to have a siding sneaking off the main line going behind a hill.
You could model a gate and some fencing. Some N Scale stacks poking up behind the hill suggest there is a industry there in the distance.
Larry
Conductor.
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