In the thread “Industrial layout dilemma”, David Starr (dstarr) made the following general comment on the location and orientation of tracks and roads in industrial areas:
That comment (and Byron Henderson’s excellent “Webster Street lead” plan in the same thread) made me go to bed last night thinking about my own layout.
I am reasonably happy with my basic track plan, which is heavily inspired by Minnesota shortline Progressive Rail’s Airlake Industrial Park, in Lakeville, MN, ca 2000-2001, but backdated to the early 1960s and transplanted to more urban surroundings (4-6 story brick warehouses instead of 1 story modern warehouses etc).
The track plan schematic is like this:
This is what my layout plan looked like:
I know that the runaround along the lower wall is out of the way - but the prototype location didn’t have any runarounds at all - instead they used two engines, one on the east side of the cut of cars and one on the west side, so they could make pickups and drop offs to tracks facing either east or west.
A lot depends on the age of the industrial area. If it is an area that was designed and built post WW2 then it may have a very regular pattern and have the tracks parallel to the roads. On consideration is that the roads tend to be along the front of the buildings and tracks tend to be along the backs or sides of the buildings.
If its an industrial area that pre-dates WW2 (and if you are using large brick buildings, that pretty well means it is) then the tracks and the roads and the buildings are more likely to be at odd angles to each other. The roads and tracks were developed independently of each other. Tracks tend to be at the sides or rear, but may be along the fronts of the buildings also.
Here are some shots I took in Kansas City, Mo., down in the West Bottoms. If you Google “Doc’s Caboose” hobby shop, this is about 2 blocks NW of there.
Obviously the people who built these industries didn’t read the “right angle” rule.
Stein-Your changes look OK to me evcept for the chemical plant I would add a small pump house and pipes for the tanks. I do have concerns with the two industries on the left side.It looks like you have the track running into them but the track length looks too short eveb for a 40’ box car.Other than that I think your plan look great.Bob
I think the first one looks better to me. Particularly for a small space. Tracks at different angles breaks up the same-ness that you would have on the newer plan.
By all means - I didn’t mean to imply that older prototype industries always was lined up nicely along the track.
I’ve also seen prototype buildings located at all kinds of angles (and buildings made into all kinds of more or less weird shapes to fit in between the tracks - like this maps.live.com overhead picture from an interestingly shaped building in the town of Alvin south of Houston in Texas: http://tinyurl.com/5ztqrh
Or buildings around New York Cross Harbor’s Bush Terminal in Brooklyn, where tracks cut through the corner of a building on the corner of 2nd avenue and 42nds street (or possibly 3rds and 41st - somewhere in that neighbourhood, anyways).
I guess that my challenge is that I based my track plan on a neat modern sub
Hmm - that is a point. How about if I do something like this - a combination of the two latest plans - Menasha Paper placed at an angle to the rest - creating a little more depth, while ChemCentral is straight ahead instead of jutting up at the same angle as Menasha ?
I am also toying with another change - moving Rytway distribution from across the track from Lakeville Mill down to the bottom of the layout (where it bumps out the transload facility), to allow me room for more tracks (and more switching) at the mill.
I know I have to make the final decision for myself in the end - but I am open to suggestions here, people.
To me, getting the “old” look is more of a “scenery and type of buildings” choice more so than a track layout plan. I think a crowded look would acheive what you are looking for. I would use backdrops and background structures (meaning background flats) to acheive it in the space and track plan you already have.
Absolutely a point. What I am concerned about is whether I have left myself enough space to work with for scenery (even cramped scenery), or whether I am pushing tracks way too close to the walls.
But I got about 7" inches of depth at ChemCentral. Guess I could try something up in that corner with Menasha and ChemCentral there that is similar to something I did on an earlier layout I worked on: make ChemCentral about 4" deep, leave about 3" behind ChemCentral and put a paper background building across the street - and try to make it look like the street goes off to the right behind ChemCentral.
Something like this:
On my earlier layout, the effect became something like this:
Not sure that it is all that convincing, but maybe it will just have to be good enough for now.
One of the things that makes layouts seem more realistic to me is when there is a reason for the buildings to be located as they are. Sometimes the roads came first, sometimes, the railroad came first, sometimes industries grew over time. Each of these will impart a slightly different look and configuration to the resulting industrial locations.
For example, on my little N scale switching layout I imagined that the road grid was laid out first and that the railroad curved to accommodate the roadway locations.
One thing that always makes things look just a little less realistic (to me, anyway) is when all the industrial tracks branch off at exactly the angle of the off-the-shelf turnouts. (Not a specific comment about Stein’s layout, just a general point).
That makes sense. I guess that the impression I want to create is something similar to the milling district on the south (western) bank of the Mississippi in Minneapolis.
Industries (mainly mills) were clustered close together in neat parallell rows near the river to take advantage of water power from Saint Anthony’s falls (either directly from the river or from water channels that ran under the streets), but they were also very dependent on the railroads to get grain in and flour out.
Road access was not nearly as important as staying close to the river and having access to the railroads. Some pictures to give a general impression of the area in the late 1950s/early 1960s:
One thing that always makes things look just a little more toylike (to me, anyway) is when all the industrial tracks branch off at exactly the angle of the off-the-shelf turnouts.
Stein, I wasn’t specifically talking about your design … just a general point.
It may just be personal preference, but I think layouts look slightly more realsitic when the tracks line up along one or two (or a very few) different axes. I think it makes it look as if there is a reason that the buildings and tracks are set-up as they are. In most real-life situations, the surveyors that site the buildings orient them in response to some external element … where the roads are, where the tracks are, natural features such as hills or rivers, even the cardinal compass directions.
For example, one more opportunity for this in your latest design would be to have the Twin City Brick track align parallel with the Lakeville Mill tracks (and the “main” between them). It just suggests that all of those tracks are oriented in the same way for some reason.
But we’re now getting down to the fine points of what makes something look good to one person vs. another – so a lot depends on what looks good to you!
I understood that. I just like to grab ideas (general or specific) from others, and then go play with the ideas by trying to apply them to some situation I am interested in.
That is a good point. Now for an application of the principle in this particular case:
Certainly - and I do realize that in the end I of course have to make up my own mind about how to do it. Following your principle, I have now tried out three combinations for Twin City Bricks:
a) Orienting the buildings perpendicular to the road, but taking straight track diagonally into yard @ about 20 degrees of the horizontal (ie not as steep as in front of Lakeville Mill:
Also, in regards to the whole pre/post WWII you might consider when the streets were laid-out in respect to the invention of the automobile. There are few intersections in some of the older neighborhoods here in Charlotte that make me think “what the heck were they thinking here” then I have to remind myself the street was laid-out thinking horse-drawn cart, not cars.
The same goes in effect for trains: sometimes the train came after the industries were built. So the question is when was your railroad built compared to the history of the town? Was the railraod built to go to the industry, or did the industries grow around the railroad?
Some of the newer manufacturing facilities that were built post war were built on lots that held older wood structures. The older structures were probably built for ease of shipping things by rail, so the newer ones also took advantage of that setting and orientation. The street layout on your last three drawings looks good and does a good job of avoiding roads going into the backdrop where they are seen, and the building locations look good too. (Except for Twin City Brick) I do think that Twin City Brick should be parallel to a siding of some sort. Maybe modify the shape more to a rectangle, or add an extension on it if it is a building that you already have.
As to the room you have between the tracks and backdrop, 7 inches is a lot. I am used to working with about half that. The best separator that I have found between the tracks and the wall behind it with background buildings on it is an old wood fence of vertical boards. I set the fence about an inch away from the wall. The hardest thing I have found to match up between foreground and background is a road, so I try to avoid that when possible, but on my current layout it seems that is not possible. You have avoided that on the last plans.
Haven’t got a building for Twin City Brick yet. Could be that I turn it into Twin City Building Supply Co or something like that.
I am kind of envisioning that business as having a small yard office by the gate (where truck drivers get paperwork taken care of), and an open storage building for lumber and bricks and suchlike along the fence on the left - leaving the center of the lot open for unloading RR cars and loading trucks or moving stuff from flatcars or boxcars to the storage shed.
Mmmm - I have a Washington Salvage Yard building laying around - I might be able to use that one. Or maybe pick up something like the Cornerstone Walton & Son Lumber kit from my LHS.
I’ll think about building location, though. But I think I’ll leave the track configuration for the brick/building supply business as it is for now.
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As to the room you have between the tracks and backdrop, 7 inches is a lot. I am used to working with about half that. The best separator that I have found between the tracks and the wall behind it with background buildings on it is an old wood fence of vertical boards. I se
I personally like your original plan the best. To me it just “looks” best. When it all comes down to it mimicking prototypical layouts may be the ultimate goal but there are always compromises. When you try to model some things down to the exact detail of the original, it doesn’t always work. The key is to recreate the “feel” of the intended place you are modelling. I have to agree with an earlier comment that this is mostly determined by scenery. I think for every “rule” you learn when it comes to orientation of roads or track vs buildings, you will always find something that didn’t follow those general rules. That’s the beauty of modelling. There’s a good chance it’s prototypical somewhere. There are many places that look like buildings were afterthoughts and there are other places that are the opposite. Some places look well thought out. As long as your track is arranged in a way that makes it easy to work in a way that is believable, it’ll be fine. Work on scenery to complete the feel. That’s just my $.02
I do understand the difference between “immutable laws of nature” and “suggested good practices”.
And I understand that pretty much any kind of design has a large element of art, which cannot always be replaced by the mechanical application of simple “rules”.
Having agreed on that, I am curious - why does the first plan look better to you ? What is it that you like about the first plan (version 28 of the plan, actually) vs the latest (version 32).
From a pure track standpoint ignoring industry names, I like the west side of version 32 better but the area around the chimney better in the first version. I could see potential operational line of sight issues with it though. I do like the 3 track “yard” in front of the mill though. I think what it comes down to is really just having the building over there. For some reason I just like it. Then again sometimes things can get too cluttered so maybe the later version is best. Things often end up looking very different on the actual layout than you think it will on a diagram. Both track setups are fine. It’s really just a personal thing.
