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Primarily, the Rocky Mountains yield various ores such as coal, lead, precious metals, even uranium, but the industries that produce such ladings are rarely in town; rather, they are in some of the most remote locations imaginable. If you are modeling an urban area, then the industries in that town would likely be related to the processing of such ores, like a smelter or a big stockpile of graded and sorted stone. Also, there might be industries that are related to the kinds of activities that occur in the not-so-rockies, such as livestock and dairy farming or other agriculture. Meat packing plants come to mind, as well as cattle corrals. I'm sure, though, that there are representatives of almost every type of industry, just as there is all across the country, though in greater or lesser degrees. I suggest picking up a book or two at the next train show in your area (or else online) which has your region as subject matter. You'll be surprised how much good information is out there; I model northern Virginia, and found a book that is specifically about my railroad's Shenandoah branch through Front Royal, which I am modeling. A whole coffee-table-sized 150-page book about the 200+ miles of railroad that I'm modeling, and nothing else! From it, I learned about the iron mining and smelters that I didn't know were in Virginia, as well as livestock transportation to serve some tanneries, two industry types that I had not thought about including before. <br /> <br />The "fake spur" concept is very valid and is the kind of ingeniuty that was behind the development of "staging yards", which is an unmodeled portion of layout, usually hidden from view, where trains are parked, waiting to make their appearance on the layout. My pike is set up so that a local runs out of my major town's yard, switches all the coal mines, then returns to that same yard. Then, the cars in that yard are sorted into trains that will make the long trip down to Roanoke, which is really only a staging yard. I assemble the Roanoke-bound train, then send it off; it promptly exits the layout and enters the staging yard, and that's all there is to it. In the real world, those cars would continue beyond Roanoke, likely to the piers at Lambert's Point in Norfolk, where they'll be emptied into boats that are bound for all sorts of places... I'm sure eventually someone is gonna burn that coal, but I'm not bothering to model it. An accessible staging track is all I need.
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