I'm nearing the basic completion of my branch line, where the track splits into spurs to serve a number of as-yet-undetermined industries (https://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/p/287927/3406801.aspx#3406801). I need ideas for smallish factories or other operations.
What are your favorites? Kit built? Kitbashed? Scratchbuilt? 3D printed? Pictures please, if possible. EDIT: Oooh, that sounds like I'm asking what you generally prefer. My question is, what specific factories or other items are your faves.
Thanks,
-Matt
Returning to model railroading after 40 years and taking unconscionable liberties with the SP&S, Northern Pacific and Great Northern roads in the '40s and '50s.
For a small-footprint industry, particularly in a small-town/branchline setting, can't do much better than the old wooden grain elevator. Due to it's height, it's kinda impressive, but has a very small footprint. I have a Walthers kitbuilt one (Cornerstone Farmers Cooperative).
https://www.walthers.com/farmers-cooperative-rural-grain-elevator-kit-elevator-8-7-8-x-7-1-4-x-10-quot-23-x-18-x-25cm
tony koester had industries that were inthe aisles, just a spur along the edge of the layout
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
Easy.
T & J Harrison, Small Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers
IMG_4877 by David Harrison, on Flickr
Town Tailors, Smith & Butler's Printers, Hey & Humphreys Bottlers (of ale), Fairbairn Lawson Arms Manufacturers, T & J Harrison Small Arms & Ammunition, and Hudson Ward Flour Millers all reside at Leeds Sovereign Street Yard.
IMG_5153 by David Harrison, on Flickr
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
A team track or rail<->truck transfer is about as small-footprint as it's possible to get. It may not even require any sort of structure(s). Just a gravel driveway beside the track.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
A lumber yard for sure. Every town that I drive through has a siding leading into the local lumber yard. Lumber yards are always fun to detail with loads of plywood, 2x4s, etc.
Rich
Alton Junction
I went back to the original thread and I see that you run steam. To me, that means a lot of flexibility as the RRs of the steam era pretty much served anything and everything. For my pyke, I went with industries that reflected my favorite engines and rolling stock: logging, mining and some passenger. That pretty much determined what the branches would look like. I guess another approach would be to pick buildings that look nice from your perspective. Otherwise, you can pretty much put anything as old-time manufacturing could be quite small, from sawmills to small breweries.
20211017_104745 on Flickr
DSC_0201 on Flickr
Simon (the brewery is from our local club)
crossthedogWhat are your favorites? Kit built? Kitbashed? Scratchbuilt? 3D printed?
On all of my layouts, all industries were small, much smaller than anything in the real world. The spur gives the operating fun, the building is just a prop.
Allen's Wrenches (or something like that) by Magnuson is my favorite small building. There are actually two small buildings in the box.
I think the VFWD (Victoria Falls Water Department) Pumping Station by Magnuson is my second favorite. The pumping station has a boiler house and smoke stacks and has never been a pumping station. I always say it is a foundry.
-Not my pictures or model
It has a footprint of only 5-1/2 by 4-1/2 inches, but it looks like a real industry.
I salvaged this little building from the layout of a local modeller, and it will be an industry on the next layout. Very small, but it gives me a place to park a couple of freight cars for loading.
-Photograph by Kevin Parson
It is a wood structure. It might be from a craftsman kit, or it could be scratch built. I don't know.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Hello All,
Not to be facetious, but- -those that their actual footprint on the pike represents a larger industry off pike.
On my 4'x8' pike a kit-bashed Suydam #24; "Wyoming Coal Mine or Bulk Loading Plant" represents the entire mining complex.
The footprint of the kit-bashed structure is approximately 4"x5" but gives the illusion of a much larger unseen industry.
Another thread was about modeling a bulk transfer facility of crude oil.
The OP had extremely limited space.
No need to model the offshore buoys and supertankers that offload their cargo to a tank farm, or the entire tank farm and associated complex piping.
The "wellheads" from the tank farm could be modeled to a single-sided loading platform for the waiting tanker cars.
All in the space between the existing track and the facial.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
I have a small meatpacking plant from Suydam and a background brewery building I built on the aisle, just an inch-deep structure that I had fun creating a shallow interior for, plus a Railway Express office. These are loosely tied together by some of my transition era rolling stock, ice bunker reefers. So, on one side of the yard sits an icehouse. There's a lot of local traffic generated by having to ice the reefers, in addition to load them, before shipping them out.
I have a small team track and a freight house, too. The footprint of my carfloat dock is small, without the carfloat, although the need for sidings and track to support carfloat operations starts to take up space.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
My fav small kit is a Walther's trackside oil dealer. It's perfect for my country layout. The structure is very easy to build also and can operate independently or get attached to a larger related industry.
As a Vermonter I will offer an industry that is fun to model - Dairy.
I got the Walther's Dairy kit as well as a wooden craft kit of a dairy transfer stand which has a small footprint.
The cool thing about having dairy as an industry is it gives one an excuse to have express runs on the layout.
- charles
Keep in mind, one medium sized industry might look more realistic than two very small ones. Some industries may have separate tracks to receive different types of cars, or separate spotting locations for incoming cars with raw materials and outgoing cars with finished products. A food-related business might have a spur for unloading tank cars and another for unloading boxcars, and ship out it's finished product in reefers.
I have a question or comment for almost every post here, and it will take me a long while to put it together, but for now, thanks to every single one of you. These are all great ideas.
I have several towns on my layout with team tracks, most of which require little space (no need to model the whole thing, just the interesting parts near the track.)Here's a few views in Dunnville (where there are also several larger industries)...
...there's another much smaller team track area in South Cayuga...
Elfrida has a team track, too, also not all that large...
...but also includes a small shed for LCL (Less than CarLoad) shipments...
There's also a team track in Mount Forest, again, wedged-in with other industries...
As has been mentioned, a small grain elevator doesn't take-up a lot of space...
...but I had enough room to add-on a small scratchbuilt farm supply store.In this view of the same grain elevator, there's a small red coal elevator in the left background, along with a small white icehouse....
Since I'm modelling the late '30s, I have similar scratchbuilt ones in most of the smaller on-layout towns.The coal and ice comes in by train, and is delivered to customers using either trucks or horse-drawn wagons.
Wayne
One of my favorite small industries is a log loading spur. Log cars are short, generally 32ft. A spur 2 cars long is fine, since cars have to be moved to the loader one at a time. In my era, steam donkeys and/or some spar rigging is all it takes. However, a log loading spur is not scenically compatible with a town.
Fred W
....modeling foggy coastal Oregon, where it's always 1900....
How about the railroad use one spur. For mow stuff. New ties old ties, mow equipment loading and storage. EmergNcy supplies Etc
shane
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
How about a 20' x 20' building that occupies about 2 1/2" in HO that saw numerous car loadings daily and served two tracks. Here in northern lower Michigan we are known as the cherry capital of the world. Probably in the late 50's or the 60's the Pere Marquette rr built a fruit transfer building to transfer fruit to refrigerator cars. It was a metal building that probably replaced some kind of wood structure before my time. Opposite sides had roll up doors at car door bottom height and one side had two truck doors side by side. The inside probably had just enough room for a fork lift to unload the trucks and place the fruit containers in the cars. The entire building was on a concrete pad about 3' high. it was torn down in the last five years for some reason but the buiding can still be seen on Google Earth in Williamsburg Michigan. Just south of old M72 and west of Elk Lake Road. the tracks appear to be able to have handled 6 to 10 cars easily. no evidence of a car puller so it was probably switched by a locomotive.
wjstixFor a small-footprint industry, particularly in a small-town/branchline setting, can't do much better than the old wooden grain elevator. Due to it's height, it's kinda impressive, but has a very small footprint.
gregctony koester had industries that were inthe aisles, just a spur along the edge of the layout
NorthBritTown Tailors, Smith & Butler's Printers, Hey & Humphreys Bottlers (of ale), Fairbairn Lawson Arms Manufacturers, T & J Harrison Small Arms & Ammunition, and Hudson Ward Flour Millers all reside at Leeds Sovereign Street Yard.
cv_acrA team track or railtruck transfer is about as small-footprint as it's possible to get. It may not even require any sort of structure(s). Just a gravel driveway beside the track.
richhotrainA lumber yard for sure. Every town that I drive through has a siding leading into the local lumber yard. Lumber yards are always fun to detail with loads of plywood, 2x4s, etc.
snjroyI went back to the original thread and I see that you run steam. To me, that means a lot of flexibility as the RRs of the steam era pretty much served anything and everything. For my pyke, I went with industries that reflected my favorite engines and rolling stock: logging, mining and some passenger. That pretty much determined what the branches would look like. I guess another approach would be to pick buildings that look nice from your perspective. Otherwise, you can pretty much put anything as old-time manufacturing could be quite small, from sawmills to small breweries.
SeeYou190I salvaged this little building from the layout of a local modeller, and it will be an industry on the next layout. Very small, but it gives me a place to park a couple of freight cars for loading.
jjdamnitThe footprint of the kit-bashed structure is approximately 4"x5" but gives the illusion of a much larger unseen industry. Another thread was about modeling a bulk transfer facility of crude oil. The OP had extremely limited space. No need to model the offshore buoys and supertankers that offload their cargo to a tank farm, or the entire tank farm and associated complex piping. The "wellheads" from the tank farm could be modeled to a single-sided loading platform for the waiting tanker cars. All in the space between the existing track and the facia
crossthedog I really like that pumping station and found several for sale.
It is not a difficult kit to find, but prices can be all over the place. You should be able to get one for about 40.00 total if you are lucky and/or patient.
It is a resin kit, so all you get are the walls and the chimneys in the box. You will need to add an interior if wanted.
I have built this kit twice, and I have a third one for the next layout.
MisterBeasleyI have a small meatpacking plant from Suydam and a background brewery building I built on the aisle, just an inch-deep structure that I had fun creating a shallow interior for, plus a Railway Express office. These are loosely tied together by some of my transition era rolling stock, ice bunker reefers. So, on one side of the yard sits an icehouse. There's a lot of local traffic generated by having to ice the reefers, in addition to load them, before shipping them out.I have a small team track and a freight house, too.
kasskabooseMy fav small kit is a Walther's trackside oil dealer. It's perfect for my country layout. The structure is very easy to build also and can operate independently or get attached to a larger related industry.
AblebakercharlieAs a Vermonter I will offer an industry that is fun to model - Dairy. I got the Walther's Dairy kit as well as a wooden craft kit of a dairy transfer stand which has a small footprint. The cool thing about having dairy as an industry is it gives one an excuse to have express runs on the layout.
wjstixKeep in mind, one medium sized industry might look more realistic than two very small ones. Some industries may have separate tracks to receive different types of cars, or separate spotting locations for incoming cars with raw materials and outgoing cars with finished products. A food-related business might have a spur for unloading tank cars and another for unloading boxcars, and ship out it's finished product in reefers.
doctorwayneI have several towns on my layout with team tracks, most of which require little space (no need to model the whole thing, just the interesting parts near the track.) Here's a few views in Dunnville (where there are also several larger industries)...
fwrightOne of my favorite small industries is a log loading spur. Log cars are short, generally 32ft. A spur 2 cars long is fine, since cars have to be moved to the loader one at a time. In my era, steam donkeys and/or some spar rigging is all it takes. However, a log loading spur is not scenically compatible with a town. Fred W
NVSRRHow about the railroad use one spur. For mow stuff. New ties old ties, mow equipment loading and storage. EmergNcy supplies Etc
ndbprrHow about a 20' x 20' building that occupies about 2 1/2" in HO that saw numerous car loadings daily and served two tracks. Here in northern lower Michigan we are known as the cherry capital of the world. Probably in the late 50's or the 60's the Pere Marquette rr built a fruit transfer building to transfer fruit to refrigerator cars. It was a metal building that probably replaced some kind of wood structure before my time. Opposite sides had roll up doors at car door bottom height and one side had two truck doors side by side. The inside probably had just enough room for a fork lift to unload the trucks and place the fruit containers in the cars. The entire building was on a concrete pad about 3' high. it was torn down in the last five years for some reason but the buiding can still be seen on Google Earth in Williamsburg Michigan. Just south of old M72 and west of Elk Lake Road. the tracks appear to be able to have handled 6 to 10 cars easily. no evidence of a car puller so it was probably switched by a locomotive.
SeeYou190It is not a difficult kit to find, but prices can be all over the place. You should be able to get one for about 40.00 total if you are lucky and/or patient.
crossthedog NorthBrit Town Tailors, Smith & Butler's Printers, Hey & Humphreys Bottlers (of ale), Fairbairn Lawson Arms Manufacturers, T & J Harrison Small Arms & Ammunition, and Hudson Ward Flour Millers all reside at Leeds Sovereign Street Yard. David, I wish you would show a photo of that yard from further away so I could see how some of those industries fit in. I especially like the idea of printers and brewers.Cheers, -Matt
NorthBrit Town Tailors, Smith & Butler's Printers, Hey & Humphreys Bottlers (of ale), Fairbairn Lawson Arms Manufacturers, T & J Harrison Small Arms & Ammunition, and Hudson Ward Flour Millers all reside at Leeds Sovereign Street Yard.
David, I wish you would show a photo of that yard from further away so I could see how some of those industries fit in. I especially like the idea of printers and brewers.Cheers,
Matt. Left side from the top - T&J Harrison and Hudson Ward. Right side from the top - Town Tailors, Smith & Butlers Printers, Hey & Humphyeys, Fairbairn Lawson. The whole lot in a space less than 3ft by 1 foot. OO/HO Gauge.
IMG_2217 by David Harrison, on Flickr
@David, thanks for the extra photo. Looking at it with the others I can now see how it all fits together. Very nice. I suppose you have to switch out a car now and then that's in the way of one of the other industries on the same track, since you have several on each side of the fork, and then spot it back where it was? Is that a thing? I guess it would have to be. EDIT: I will have an almost identical trackage scenario. My cars are longer so I could not include as many businesses, but I could possibly do something similar.
I have quite a few on both my mainline and branchline. Several small freighthouses. A fuel oil depot. An auto parts warehouse. A creamery. Near the backdrop I have a number represented by low relief structures. A beverage bottler. A candy and tobacco distributor. A plumbing supply warehouse. It's easy to find generic structures to represent industries such as these. DPM is a good place to start.
kasskabooseMy fav small kit is a Walther's trackside oil dealer.
I don't know if this is the one you meant, but Walthers McGraw Oil Company has a very small footprint.
-Walthers Image
SeeYou190 kasskaboose My fav small kit is a Walther's trackside oil dealer. I don't know if this is the one you meant, but Walthers McGraw Oil Company has a very small footprint. -Walthers Image -Kevin
kasskaboose My fav small kit is a Walther's trackside oil dealer.
crossthedogIt seems to me that several of your team track platforms are accompanied by a nearby boom sort of thing, the black crane that crosses over the track like a signal tower but which I assume is some kind of unloader. Why are those structures so often near your team track? Your comment about coal and ice coming in by train made me recognize a hole in my knowledge that has existed for better than 45 years, and that is, how does coal get up into a coaling tower? I have the Alexander coaling tower, and it never occurred to me until just now to wonder. Does it get elevated the same way grain does? It seems like this would be difficult, since coal is so much more coarse.
The small overhead cranes (from Kibri, or Faller, I think) are for loading or unloading large items onto trucks. The crane itself is stationary, but the trolley is moveable.At some time in the past, there were coal mines in Canada, but most were quite a distance from my hometown of Hamilton, Ontario.Hamilton, from the late 1900s was an industrial city, with two large steel producers and lots of industrial manufacturing.While I'm not modelling the city, I've named several small towns on the layout for actual places, but none of them are intended to replicate the real ones.
In the early 1900s, the TH&B (Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Rwy.) had 1500 65 ton hoppers built by National Steel Car (also in Hamilton).Those cars were hauled to Port Maitland on the north shore of Lake Erie (not all at the same time, of course), then loaded on a lake boat and sent to Ashtabula, Ohio, where they were loaded with coal.The loaded cars were then put back on the boat, and back to TH&B track for a trip to the steel mills (and local coal dealerships, when home heating was generally from coal-fired furnaces.I decide to add the coal dealers' scratchbuilt coal elevators in each town, rather than trying to model the steel industry, as my layout room is only 560 square feet (the steel plant were I worked was over 1,000 aces).
I figured that servicing the heating industry would provide lots of operations, and decided to add ice delivery, too...(I'm modelling the late '30s, a time when many rural towns didn't necessarily have easy access to electricity, so there were coal furnaces and ice boxes rather than refrigerators.To that end, I created the Hoffentoth Bros. Ice, a plant that cut and stored winter ice from Lake Erie, then shipped it out to some of the surrounding small towns year-round. Here's the track-side of the factory in Lowbanks...
...and a couple of other views...
The coal dealerships, along with the smaller icehouses, are in most of the on-layout towns...
The Brothers also run a facility for reefer icing, useful for the local farms growing and shipping fruit and vegetables....(some structures take-up much more space)
While there are no local competitors for the ice business, there are a couple for the coal and fuel companies, such as Creechans Fine Fuels (named for a friend)...
Here's a photo provided by Leon Hoffentoth..."That there's Cletus, lookin' all smug and important, and showin'-off his new fangled wrist watch thinga-ma-jig, while I'm the good-lookin' one on the right. (I believe that the intended photo may not be allowed.)
Here's the cover over over the dump-pit for the small coal dealerships...
...the covers are removed, then the hopper car is spotted over the pit, with one set of hopper gates opened at-a-time. The hopper car is then manually re-spotted (using a prybar against the wheels).
Most of the coal bins have the elevator side of the structure facing the viewer (and the track, of course), but I built one with the outlet chutes (for loading trucks or wagons) facing the layout's aisleway...
There are also two coaling towers on the layout...this one is a modified one from Walthers (just small enough to fit into the close quarters available)...
...and a much larger one from Tichy....
Most of my other industrial sites have structures somewhat suitably-sized, but like many other layouts, there's never enough room for really big ones.
Here's a quick view of part of Dunnville....
I'll try, later, to add some other photos of largish manufacturing companies, even though most are miniscule compared to the real ones which inspired them.
John-NYBWA candy and tobacco distributor.
doctorwayneThe small overhead cranes (from Kibri, or Faller, I think) are for loading or unloading large items onto trucks. The crane itself is stationary, but the trolley is moveable.
Hey, if you ever invite me over to visit your layout, and then afterwards you notice that that passenger depot next to Hoffentoth Bros. is missing, and then you happen to recall that I was acting shifty and had a large angular bulge under my jacket as I was leaving... well...that's just a really fine looking train station, is all I'm sayin.
crossthedog doctorwayne The small overhead cranes (from Kibri, or Faller, I think) are for loading or unloading large items onto trucks. The crane itself is stationary, but the trolley is moveable. Wayne, thanks for that info. I think I could easily fit a team track ramp and one of those puppies on one end of one of my town tracks. Hey, if you ever invite me over to visit your layout, and then afterwards you notice that that passenger depot next to Hoffentoth Bros. is missing, and then you happen to recall that I was acting shifty and had a large angular bulge under my jacket as I was leaving... well...that's just a really fine looking train station, is all I'm sayin. -Matt
doctorwayne The small overhead cranes (from Kibri, or Faller, I think) are for loading or unloading large items onto trucks. The crane itself is stationary, but the trolley is moveable.
Wayne, thanks for that info. I think I could easily fit a team track ramp and one of those puppies on one end of one of my town tracks.