The following are the only companies i could think of that uses the railroad. I could only think of the following:
-Lumberyards
-steel mills
-power plants
-truck-train terminal buildings
If I'm missing any, please add on.
Note: All eras and locations are acceptable. This is for pure conversation. If anyone gain any ideas congratulations and if you do not, then, oh well. This is for pure talk.
Could you consider powder cement plant an industry? Not the construction mobile plant, but the ones in factories who uses boxcars?
LMD Manning Could you consider powder cement plant an industry? Not the construction mobile plant, but the ones in factories who uses boxcars?
-Morgan
Do you have a time period in mind? That might make a difference as some businesses used railroads in the past and no longer do so. Here's my list of rail served businesses that I am considering or have seen. MR has a series of newstand books out on line side industries and how to model them. I think there are four or five now.
1. Grain Elevators
2. Seed packaging for agriculture.
3. Feed Mills for livestock.
4. Oil dealers and refiners.
5. Coal dealers.
6. Furniture manufacturers.
7. Meat distribution warehouse.
8. Wholesale grocery warehouse.
9. Building contractor supply yard.
10. Junk yard or metal reclamation facility.
11. Less Than Carload (LCL) transfer facility.
12. Wholesale hardware distribution warehouse.
13. Electrical supply warehouse.
14. Brewery.
15. Foundry or iron works.
16. Paper products manufacturer.
17. Corn syrup distribution facility. Not mine, but it was featured in MRP not too long ago.
Jim - Preserving the history of the NKP Cloverleaf first subdivision.
any time period.
Jamis Do you have a time period in mind? That might make a difference as some businesses used railroads in the past and no longer do so.
Do you have a time period in mind? That might make a difference as some businesses used railroads in the past and no longer do so.
I mean in general. anytime, any country, any railroad or railway
Add: Ice plants, Railroad Express Agency, and pickle factories -- All 3 industries required specialized freight cars.
Don't forget milk trains picking up the milk cans in the country from a farmer's pick-up truck + simple platform to a centralized processing facility.
Perhaps a refurbished train station will add "abandoned structure" contrast.
Conemaugh Road & Traction circa 1956
Do not forget freight depots that are connected or inside passenger stations.
Ethanol Plant
Intermodal Yard
Auto Manufacturing Plant
Michael
CEO- Mile-HI-RailroadPrototype: D&RGW Moffat Line 1989
One of the best sources for modern day rail-served industries that I have found is David P. Jordan's very interesting Peoria Station blog. He goes into great detail as to what is shipped or received: http://peoriastation.blogpeoria.com/
John Timm
war machinery plants
A good place to start for general ideas is the Opsig (Operations Special Interest Group) list of railserved industries: http://www.shenware.com/indman.html
But it's kind of useless to ask for a general list of industries "anywhere, any period", and then pick a few at random for a layout. The "tell me everything you know in random order" method has been tried before, many times, and it does not work all that well.
I would suggest picking some location and some era, and then ask some specific questions. There were (and are) tons of industries shipping by rail.
Smile, Stein
Well I was asking people in general and if you want to bring up everyone enjoyment then you can go elsewhere. I was talking about what I knew and everyone else comment what they knew.
Thank you.
steinjr A good place to start for general ideas is the Opsig (Operations Special Interest Group) list of railserved industries: http://www.shenware.com/indman.html But it's kind of useless to ask for a general list of industries "anywhere, any period", and then pick a few at random for a layout. The "tell me everything you know in random order" method has been tried before, many times, and it does not work all that well. I would suggest picking some location and some era, and then ask some specific questions. There were (and are) tons of industries shipping by rail. Smile, Stein
I hate when people who bring negative vibes onto someone else post. These ideas are not for me, but for everyone who commented. I already have my packing and steel mill as well as my concrete plant on my layout and I really do not have enough room for another industry. sorry if you think I'm some idea stealer.
On my layout, I have
paper cup company
limestone quarry
cement plant
feed mill
grain elevator
pulpwood & woodchip
chemical plant
gas & oil distributor
junk yard
frozen food factory
stamped metal products factory
joint compound factory (spackling)
rebar fabricating plant
farm supply company
bakery
a mysterious company that receives high quality paper and black & green ink, but doesn't ship anything. There are always armored cars parked at the loading dock.
ACME Manufacturing (American Company Making Everything). The consignee is Wil E. Coyote.
Off the layout, but served thru an interchange is a meat packing plant.
Hope this helps.
Jeff
This link is a good start. http://www.opsig.org/reso/inddb/
They have lists in text and Excel format divided into geographically areas.
Bob
Photobucket Albums:NPBL - 2008 The BeginningNPBL - 2009 Phase INPBL - 2010 Downtown
rclanger This link is a good start. http://www.opsig.org/reso/inddb/ They have lists in text and Excel format divided into geographically areas.
You have a nice layout. I saw one design preservation. Did you kitbash any?
Okay, that's kinda cool. This post started out between the post box and the tag box, but it's not actually in anything. Let's see where that text ends up, shall we? No, I don't think that was meant to be a slam at all. A lot of people have come in here asking for generalized info, or simply badky misworded a post (not me...) and then it ends up feeling like a waste of time for the repliers. When that's not the case, that particular thread seems like an oddball. So what you are wanting is to just brainstorm industries that were railserved, for the sake of making a list, and not for layout purposes, right? That's fine by me. In that thread, let me add in a few more:
Flashwave Okay, that's kinda cool. This post started out between the post box and the tag box, but it's not actually in anything. Let's see where that text ends up, shall we? No, I don't think that was meant to be a slam at all. A lot of people have come in here asking for generalized info, or simply badky misworded a post (not me...) and then it ends up feeling like a waste of time for the repliers. When that's not the case, that particular thread seems like an oddball. So what you are wanting is to just brainstorm industries that were railserved, for the sake of making a list, and not for layout purposes, right? That's fine by me. In that thread, let me add in a few more: Railroads. Seems like a dumb one, but every time I turn around, there's one more self-serving commodity that they themselves have or need Rail equipment manufacturing. Rail equipment repair facilites. Printing companies can buy paper by the boxcarload Wood production companies, cardboard /paper making Candy peroducers (Mars and Hershey I think even had their own plant switchers) Scrap yards The National Areonautics & Space Administration
My post is in a catergory but you clearly do not see it but thats is ok and It's funny how I was only talking about industries and not the stuff you were talking about but it's ok since you want ruin my at the time great post. The stuff you listed someone either already posted it or does not relate to my post but thank you for trying. You can call me odd or without you think of but it wont ruin my post for other people to read and/post.
Btw you are anyone parent in my dicussion with everyone who posted so if you want to increase your ego you should take it elsewhere where people would actually care unlike me. I have the industries I want on my layout and if I want anymore, I wont consider talking to you.
On my great northern plains/southern prairies rr we have more ..
Grain elevators
Farm Equipment manufacturers and dealers
Seed and Feed stores
A couple of seed cleaning establishments
A bakery/cakery...
One coal mine
Several grocery outlets that receive shipments from team tracks...
and....
a very odd company called Blue Circle Audio...high end tube amps and speakers.
....but mostly grain elevators and feed/seed here...
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
I've made for my railroad a list
With this list I could make my waybills.
Wolfgang
Pueblo & Salt Lake RR
Come to us http://www.westportterminal.de my videos my blog
wedudler I've made for my railroad a list industries shipping & receiving With this list I could make my waybills. Wolfgang
I came across your webpage before. I was just looking up stuff that I highly if I remember and when I saw your your layout and features blew me away.
:)
A well known midwestern modeler and dealer, Ted Schnepf, has made available excellent copies of "Shipper's Guides" for a variety of railroads. The C&NW one goes product by product and lists the cities and towns in a given state where the railroad had a history of shipping or receiving that product. The variety is huge and even a quick read would give a model railroader 100 ideas for industries for a layout.
Note that Ted offers "free" access to sample pages.
http://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html
It has to be recognized that in the era before trucks nearly everything you could imagine was shipped by rail -- remember they were only seeking to fill a 36 ft boxcar! Later when trucks were common, but interstate highways were not, the exclusive shipping by rail was reduced. It was really in the 1960s when the variety began to reduce, and in part it was when the railroads stopped offering LCL service because frankly the trucks did a better job with that traffic.
Broad categories such as "food" "appliances" "home furnishings" "raw materials" -- all have nearly infinite variety. Even "wood" -- we see flats with dimensional lumber but also plywood sheets. Finer woods such as veneer were shipped in boxcars and might still be.
Thinking back to my old home town which was on the C&NW, at one siding alone they received bulk oil, lumber, plastic pellets (for the company that virtually pioneered the plastic bags that dry cleaning comes in -- it started as a dry cleaner), raw hides for two tanneries, and raw materials for a pig iron foundry.
The next siding served the huge Bucyrus Erie factory and here they both shipped and received -- shipped parts to huge shovels and draglines, but received everything from coal foundry sand, cutting oil, scrap steel for the foundry, fabricated and sheet steel, lumber for patterns and shipping.
The depot siding was a team track that back in the day received furniture, appliances, hardware, and other goods for local merchants, and there was another bulk oil dealer on that same siding. A coal dealer and lumber yard were also on sidings.
One of the more interesting customers made furniture -- heavy tables covered in formica -- the kind you see at "church suppers." they would get boxcar loads of pressed board and possibly also the huge rolls of formica. Whether they got the metal legs by rail I do not know.
One factory had its own siding and it made (and still makes) plastic signs, the kind you see at a gas station or fast food place where lights inside the sign light it up at night. The McDonald's arches are a good example. They got plastic pellets and possibly also dyes by rail into the 60s and 70s.
Just out of town a related complex of factories got the bits and scraps from the animal slaughter, leather hide, and meat packing businesses, for glue factory (bones and hoofs) and fertilizer (everything else). They shipped the most awful stuff in open gondolas. I always wondered if when they weighed the cars they included the weight of the flies and maggots ...
Dave Nelson
Ah such little imagination. Asking these open ended questions (what industries do railroads serve? what do boxcars carry?) is like asking to name all the colors. Start with where you are sitting right now. Look at everything around you in the room. Pretty much at some time or another every single thing in the room, its components, its packaging, its raw materials, its intermediate materials, etc. could have or were moved by rail. Then expand your view to the rest of the rooms in the building, then to the area outside the building and then to the surrounding neighborhood and so on in increasing diameter. If you can't come up with a couple thousand products, commodities or industries within a couple minutes, you aren't trying. If you are reading this, chances are you are seated at a computer. Computers are hauled by railroads. The computer came in a box. Railroads haul the boxes, they haul the paper the boxes are made from, they haul the wood the paper is made from, they haul the chemicals to process the wood. The computer is made of glass, plastic and metal. Railroads haul the components, they haul glass, they haul the sand and chemicals to make the glass. Railroads haul the plastic parts, they haul the raw plastic, they haul the feedstock chemicals to make the plastic. Railroads haul the machines to dig the sand. Railroads haul the pipe and steel to make the chemical plants and the reactor vessels to make the plastic. Railroads haul the ore to make the copper, the copper to make the wire and the wire itself. Railroads haul the lead to make the solder and the solder itself. The computer is probably sitting on a desk. The desk is probably made of metal, wood and plastic, with the seat maybe having a cloth cover. Railroads haul the furniture itself, they haul the metal, they haul the ores to make the metal, They haul the logs to make the vaneer that makes the plywood that makes the furniture. They haul the plastics to make the laminates and the chemicals to make the paints and finishes, and the finishes themselves. They haul the hardware to put the furniture together. They haul the textiles, they haul the materials from which the textiles are made. If the textiles have natural fibers, they haul the seed, the fertilizer, the herbicides, the raw fibers and the processed fiber to make the textiles. The computer is powered by electricity, the railroads haul the coal if its coal fired, the cement to build the dam if its hydroelectric, the towers and components if its wind powered, the reactors and fuel rods if its nuclear. For all methods they haul the boilers, the pipes, the steel, the cement, the generators, the switching gear, the wires, the power poles. So that's a couple dozen industires and you haven't even moved out of arm's reach. Think of the industries you can come up with if you look out your door.
Ah such little imagination.
Asking these open ended questions (what industries do railroads serve? what do boxcars carry?) is like asking to name all the colors.
Start with where you are sitting right now. Look at everything around you in the room. Pretty much at some time or another every single thing in the room, its components, its packaging, its raw materials, its intermediate materials, etc. could have or were moved by rail. Then expand your view to the rest of the rooms in the building, then to the area outside the building and then to the surrounding neighborhood and so on in increasing diameter.
If you can't come up with a couple thousand products, commodities or industries within a couple minutes, you aren't trying.
If you are reading this, chances are you are seated at a computer. Computers are hauled by railroads. The computer came in a box. Railroads haul the boxes, they haul the paper the boxes are made from, they haul the wood the paper is made from, they haul the chemicals to process the wood. The computer is made of glass, plastic and metal. Railroads haul the components, they haul glass, they haul the sand and chemicals to make the glass. Railroads haul the plastic parts, they haul the raw plastic, they haul the feedstock chemicals to make the plastic. Railroads haul the machines to dig the sand. Railroads haul the pipe and steel to make the chemical plants and the reactor vessels to make the plastic. Railroads haul the ore to make the copper, the copper to make the wire and the wire itself. Railroads haul the lead to make the solder and the solder itself. The computer is probably sitting on a desk. The desk is probably made of metal, wood and plastic, with the seat maybe having a cloth cover. Railroads haul the furniture itself, they haul the metal, they haul the ores to make the metal, They haul the logs to make the vaneer that makes the plywood that makes the furniture. They haul the plastics to make the laminates and the chemicals to make the paints and finishes, and the finishes themselves. They haul the hardware to put the furniture together. They haul the textiles, they haul the materials from which the textiles are made. If the textiles have natural fibers, they haul the seed, the fertilizer, the herbicides, the raw fibers and the processed fiber to make the textiles.
The computer is powered by electricity, the railroads haul the coal if its coal fired, the cement to build the dam if its hydroelectric, the towers and components if its wind powered, the reactors and fuel rods if its nuclear. For all methods they haul the boilers, the pipes, the steel, the cement, the generators, the switching gear, the wires, the power poles.
So that's a couple dozen industires and you haven't even moved out of arm's reach. Think of the industries you can come up with if you look out your door.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Flashwave So what you are wanting is to just brainstorm industries that were railserved, for the sake of making a list, and not for layout purposes, right? That's fine by me. In that thread, let me add in a few more: Railroads. Seems like a dumb one, but every time I turn around, there's one more self-serving commodity that they themselves have or need Rail equipment manufacturing. Rail equipment repair facilites. Printing companies can buy paper by the boxcarload Wood production companies, cardboard /paper making Candy peroducers (Mars and Hershey I think even had their own plant switchers) Scrap yards The National Areonautics & Space Administration
So what you are wanting is to just brainstorm industries that were railserved, for the sake of making a list, and not for layout purposes, right? That's fine by me. In that thread, let me add in a few more:
Apparently young Manning (who physically is 21 years old, according to his profile page) does not think these are examples of rail served industries :-)
Railroads of course are rail served businesses as well. They haul (or hauled) in ballast, sand, diesel or coal, sleepers, rails, spare parts (including e.g wheel sets) and lots of other things. They also haul or hauled away various things - e.g ash from ash pits in the steam era.
While e.g. NASA received space shuttle boosters by train.
There is a wide variety of industries that either currently ships or receives, or in earlier times shipped or received stuff by rail.
The OPSIG industry lists (with their 40 000 or so industries) has been mentioned several times. But just for a single railroad of moderate size - the Green Bay and Western, there exists online directories of about 1500 shippers in 1943 and 1953 at this URL: http://www.greenbayroute.com/industries.htm
It is not very hard to come up with examples of unusual and interesting shipments by rail, from caskets of nuclear waste to mushrooms to WW2 era jeeps stacked in two levels on top of each other to Bordens milk cars and so on and so forth.
Grin, Stein
dknelson A well known midwestern modeler and dealer, Ted Schnepf, has made available excellent copies of "Shipper's Guides" for a variety of railroads. The C&NW one goes product by product and lists the cities and towns in a given state where the railroad had a history of shipping or receiving that product. The variety is huge and even a quick read would give a model railroader 100 ideas for industries for a layout. Note that Ted offers "free" access to sample pages. http://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html It has to be recognized that in the era before trucks nearly everything you could imagine was shipped by rail -- remember they were only seeking to fill a 36 ft boxcar! Later when trucks were common, but interstate highways were not, the exclusive shipping by rail was reduced. It was really in the 1960s when the variety began to reduce, and in part it was when the railroads stopped offering LCL service because frankly the trucks did a better job with that traffic. Broad categories such as "food" "appliances" "home furnishings" "raw materials" -- all have nearly infinite variety. Even "wood" -- we see flats with dimensional lumber but also plywood sheets. Finer woods such as veneer were shipped in boxcars and might still be. Thinking back to my old home town which was on the C&NW, at one siding alone they received bulk oil, lumber, plastic pellets (for the company that virtually pioneered the plastic bags that dry cleaning comes in -- it started as a dry cleaner), raw hides for two tanneries, and raw materials for a pig iron foundry. The next siding served the huge Bucyrus Erie factory and here they both shipped and received -- shipped parts to huge shovels and draglines, but received everything from coal foundry sand, cutting oil, scrap steel for the foundry, fabricated and sheet steel, lumber for patterns and shipping. The depot siding was a team track that back in the day received furniture, appliances, hardware, and other goods for local merchants, and there was another bulk oil dealer on that same siding. A coal dealer and lumber yard were also on sidings. One of the more interesting customers made furniture -- heavy tables covered in formica -- the kind you see at "church suppers." they would get boxcar loads of pressed board and possibly also the huge rolls of formica. Whether they got the metal legs by rail I do not know. One factory had its own siding and it made (and still makes) plastic signs, the kind you see at a gas station or fast food place where lights inside the sign light it up at night. The McDonald's arches are a good example. They got plastic pellets and possibly also dyes by rail into the 60s and 70s. Just out of town a related complex of factories got the bits and scraps from the animal slaughter, leather hide, and meat packing businesses, for glue factory (bones and hoofs) and fertilizer (everything else). They shipped the most awful stuff in open gondolas. I always wondered if when they weighed the cars they included the weight of the flies and maggots ... Dave Nelson
I researched about the C&NW a year or so again when I was just into sports and my interest in model trains was little and I came to loving the line, but now my interest is where it should be and I love reading about anything related to illinois railroad lines, operation or defunct.
I know the BNSF has a site that lists various elevators, steel cable mfg's and such along some of their routes...
http://www.bnsf.com/customers/ebrochure//
Here's the line up for Slate Creek Industrial lead.
1.Pillsbury batch plant.
2.North American Knitting
3.Krispy Kreme
4.Landstar Elevators.Handles grain and soy beans.
5.Mid-State Grocery Distributor
6 The.J.W.Hopewell Corporation.
7.Allied Reclaim-ships old tires.
8.Distribution Track-4 active receivers.
--------------------------
1.Merrill's Meat Processing.
2.Roberts Lumber.
3.Wellmans.
4.Ohio Steel Vaults
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Ad to that list:
automobile parts manufacturing plant (small, brake parts, etc., or large, auto frames, etc)
produce packing houses (if early enough, ice bunkers for the reefer cars are used here too)
general consignment warehuses (generally, a freight storage and transfer station)
by the way, concrete (or cement) plants do not have to be especially large to be served by rail. There is one local to me that, if selectively compressed, would be quite believable. This plant takes on probably 20 or so covered hoppers (the short ones) per week. They do not take any boxcars, as all cement produced there is bulk. You could, however, maximize the diversity of car types being used by having some product being produced in bulk as well as bagged, thus taking both covered hoppers and boxcars. Walthers makes the Medusa Cement Plant that could be kitbashed and/or added on to, to your liking. That, I think, would be a fun project!