What is a good industry with alot of swtching with alot of different loads I can put on my layout???
Definitely: Steel mills! [:D]
I guess I need to ask: How much space does your layout have?
Generally industries try to avoid a lot of switching, because it costs money. If it happens it’s usually the result of a less than ideal track situation, normally due to a industry in a restrictive real estate environment.
As far as a variety of loads, the team track/freight house is an old stalwart, while a paper mill seems to also require a number of different cars.
KL
My personal favorite is a dock or port. Anything and everything comes and goes from there. It doesn’t even have to be a big one.
A car ferry can also generate ready-to-run loads of all types too.
Also, for a yard, you could add a RIP (Repair In Place) track. All types of cars get fixed there, whether you have that industry on your layout or not.
In reply to your Email Wyonate …no problem!
A brewery might have a number of different loads going both in and out.
Also, an Interchange with another railroad could provide any level of traffic diversity that you’d care to use.
How about a cannery? All kinds of things get canned, and then there’s the cans themselves, the labels, the ink if they print their own labels, etc.
Or how about an auto assembly plant? Takes up some real estate, but lots of products in, only a couple out.
I had the same problem with my layout so I made my own. Maybe call it an easy way out, but it works. I have alot of industries on my layout, but they are all car type specific. I wanted a place to go that I could get away with just about anything. Flats, odd box cars, gondolas’, etc. I made up an out fit called the Virgina Rail Service, that all they do is speaclize in custom shipping by rail.
Need to bring on some farm equpiment? How about those extra large trusses for the new building in downtown. Need to get those earth graders in for the new road? Order a container full of goodies? Got a large load of seasonal supplies? Ship it by rail with Virginia and save! We can handle it all.
How’s that get yeah? Now, I can get away with just about any load, or use any rolling stock. Everynow and then I have freinds come over and they bring some rolling stock and engines to run. The VRS is a perfect place to use the rolling stock as I can just about come up with any reason to park any thing in front. I can easliy squeeze in some extra with out throwing off my operations.
Mines will have a varied load, although much of it will come by truck…depends. INCO in Sudbury, ON, had/has a huge amount of rail traffic, several large yards, etc.
Smelters, too. New equipment/machinery/parts, broken stuff being taken for third line repair, material for manufacturing in situ, fuel for the furnaces, silica and other catalysts/fluxes brought in for the smelting, yellow sulfur being taken to port for shipping overseas, etc. With smelters, you get to have a big stack, maybe three, and at least one water tower. About as good as it gets!
A port is a good one, although it could take some doing to model a convincing one and not take away a lot of useful space. It would be worth a serious look.
Auto manufacturing. All sorts of stuff in, cars and waste out.
Heavy equipment manufacture…same.
Well how about a paper mill, with tank cars of kaolin and oil to fire the boilers. Wood chip cars, log cars all going in and slurry cars going out and box cars to take away the finished paper either flat on pallets or rolls of paper. The prospects are almost endless. When a paper making machine is up and running it rarely stops due to the process and would run both day and night. So you could introduce switching at night . Now that is fun under flood light!!! CPPedler
A meat packing/processing plant. Livestock, equipment, supplies, fuel going in and meat going out. Don’t forget a place to clean the stock cars. Icing and washing the referigerator cars. If this is in conjunction with a canning or curing plant then one gets all the raw materials for that as well as canned goods (SPAM?) going out.
Glass plant. There was an article in MR a while back on it.
Great thread, guys!
I’ve been looking for info like this, as I have several types of rolling stock and not sure the best way to use them. I also would like to have some industries with interesting traffic, but am unsure of all the types going and coming from each industry type. I have a copy of the “Trackside Industries” book from Kalmbach, but as I remember, it wasn’t that detailed.
Is there a good generic source of info like this on the web somewhere? e.g. a big table that has columns for the following: industry type, product in, reason for the product going in, rolling stock type used to bring product in, product out, rolling stock used to bring product out.
I will second the suggestion for an interchange yard - the universal industry. You can put anything there without a reason other than “It’s going to a distant city on a different carrier.”
Any large manufacturing operation can have a number of cars coming in - especially if you model older time periods:
Hoppers or gondolas with coal for the boiler room.
Boxcars with boxes, cans, etc. for shipping the product.
Flatcar loads with large pieces of machinery. (these would be less frequent).
Then specific cars, say for a large food processing plant you could add:
Tank cars for corn syrup, etc
Covered Hopper cars for corn, grain, etc
Refrigerator cars for fruit, etc
Clean Boxcars to ship the breakfast cereal, etc in.
Enjoy
Paul
An interchange track with another railroad. You can switch any kind of car and if the interchange traffic is significant, there’ll be lots of movement. Check out Tony Koester’s article on an automated interchange between the Monon and the NKP in the September MR.
Andre
Dont forget tankers to carry out edible and un-edible fats for processing. Hides go out in old, I MEAN OLD boxcars followed by flies. Gondolas are sad little things in the summer I wont go any further about them.
Dog food in bags and cans along with other things from the left overs of meat packing.
I like Food warehouses as you can get boxcars, reefers, tankers of dairy products to be bottled and all kinds of different loads.
Feed/Seed mills with elevators and tank storage for different liquids and a team track will provide virtually everything you can invent coming and going.
How about a medium sized car repair shop? Everything breaks down sooner or later and needs some TLC in the carshop, like the Walthers Cornerstone model in N and HO. The stock model has 3 tracks, 2 or 3 cars each and is easy to double up. Add in loco fuel and maintenance (think small), a couple of tracks for pick ups and set outs, and a spur for some MOW equipment and you’ve got a traffic generator plus a showcase for the zillions of cars that we all tend to collect.
Shippers Car Line had a private setup like this in Milton, PA for several years, kind of out in the sticks. The New York Central once had its car shops 10 miles east of its original East Buffalo Yard in Depew, NY if you prefer a railroad prototype located away from major yard facilities and in an outlying small town.
Rich
How about a medium sized car repair shop? Everything breaks down sooner or later and needs some TLC in the carshop, like the Walthers Cornerstone model in N and HO. The stock model has 3 tracks, 2 or 3 cars each and is easy to double up. Add in loco fuel and maintenance (think small), a couple of tracks for pick ups and set outs, and a spur for some MOW equipment and you’ve got a traffic generator plus a showcase for the zillions of cars that we all tend to collect.
Shippers Car Line had a private setup like this in Milton, PA for several years, kind of out in the sticks. The New York Central once had its car shops 10 miles east of its original East Buffalo Yard in Depew, NY if you prefer a railroad prototype located away from major yard facilities and in an outlying small town.
Rich
How about a medium sized car repair shop? Everything breaks down sooner or later and needs some TLC in the carshop, like the Walthers Cornerstone model in N and HO. The stock model has 3 tracks, 2 or 3 cars each and is easy to double up. Add in loco fuel and maintenance (think small), a couple of tracks for pick ups and set outs, and a spur for some MOW equipment and you’ve got a traffic generator plus a showcase for the zillions of cars that we all tend to collect.
Shippers Car Line had a private setup like this in Milton, PA for several years, kind of out in the sticks. The New York Central once had its car shops 10 miles east of its original East Buffalo Yard in Depew, NY if you prefer a railroad prototype located away from major yard facilities and in an outlying small town.
Rich
It’s already been mentioned, but nothing beats an interchange for wide ranging freedom of load type and there is plenty o’ switching.
Team tracks are the next best thing IMHO.
As an aside, I’ve come across some interesting documentation where a siding that looks like a private industry siding was actually thought of and used as a team track by SP.
This was from a 1935 California Railroad Commission case where WP thought they were being overcharged for switching service to what they thought was the private siding of a wholesale grocery- but the SP convinced the commission that because the siding was in fact owned by SP (on a city street) and other consignees used the siding (albeit infrequently) it was, and should be treated for tariff purposes, as a team track.
SP had a least a couple of situations like that on my beloved R Street. 
Tom Campbell