I live in a area with very low rail traffic so I’m looking for Ideas for some types of factorys that would have modern factorys that would be recieving and shipping box cars 1980-present. With everything being made over seas these days I was looking for some Ideas for a HO scale I’m planing
Hi,
Well, my layouts always were set in the 1950s (when the USA was THE manufacturer of the world), so I never had the challenge you have. But make no mistake, an awful lot of manufacturing or other activities still take place on American soil. In example… petroleum & edible oil refining and distribution, lumber and related product production, auto parts, food (fresh & canned), furniture, non bulk chemicals, animal hides (yuck!), etc., etc., etc.
Of course you need to keep in mind that its your RR, and you can do what you want, and frankly it could be said “there is a prototype for anything and everything”!
Twot hings spring to mind
1.) Paper products, they use a lot of hi-cube boxcars for shipments the the outside world. You could have a large spur or two full of them waiting to be loaded.
2.) Auto Part Plants. While the American Auto industry is sagging a bit, the European and Asia auto companies are building plants in the US like wildfire. Where I live in East Tennessee, Denso and AISIN both have plants nearbye and both are manufacturers of parts for Toyota. This could be another big industry for your layout.
The nice thing about boxcars is that they can be hauling anything, and aren’t tied to a particular industry. I’ve got a tannery and a company called “Moose Mills” that take box cars, and another generic factory with a loading dock I’ve never added a name or product to. In a back corner I have a building with a series of loading dock doors. One is “Acme” and another is “Mom’s Robot Oil.”
I have a bottle and jar manufacture plant, making glass bottles.
Such a plant requires several sources of sand, as not all sands are identical,and trace elements are importasnt.
So two places to unload sand, and a dock to ship finiched product, in cardboard boxes(incoming) on skids(incoming).
A transfer facility for unloading cars to transport trucks can take any car. Likewise a teamtrack in another town.
General Electric makes many consumer products such as stoves and fridges in more than one place. Many boxcars in and out.
Have fun.
Dave
Make that “made.” GE recently sold its home appliance business. No more GE toasters, etc…
http://online.wsj.com/articles/appliances-sale-shifts-ge-further-away-from-consumers-1410197984
Fortunately, time stands still where you want it on the layout.
Does the industry have to be a “factory?” There are plenty of other rail-served customers.
These two customers are a printing plant, and a grocery distributor.
This is a future drilling fluids plant, that ships well drilling mud in drums. Note the boxcars in the prototype photo.
This one, from an unfinished part of the layout, is another grocery distributor. They’re common in my area.
Here’s an additional unfinished industry, a salt plant that ships (among other things) bagged water softener salt in boxcars.
I photographed this industry in Gering, NE a few years ago. It’s receiving something in boxcars, maybe feed or fertilizer.
Another idea I had and am probably going to impliment on my layout is an Electronics manufactuer.
On my future layout I plan on having an industry called “Brickley Electronics” if the layout is running 1990s era time, Brickley would produce cell phones that would be shipped out from Central Virginia, down to Norfolk where they would then be loaded by ship and sent overseas to europe and the middle east. In the modern era timeframe of my layout, Brickley Electronics would manufacture GPS Systems.
The name Brickley Electronics actually is a name I made poking fun at the huge Brick-Sized early cellphones of the 90s.
The big Anheuser Busch brewery in a nearby town has several storage tracks that are always full of boxcars, I’m guessing lots of empty cans and bottles coming in and full ones going out?
regards, Peter
I can offer lots of options, but none of the examples shown are in modern '80s-style structures. There’s no reason why they couldn’t be, though, and even some current-day operations are in older buildings. This offers a good opportunity to include various styles of structures, and even to kitbash the older ones to accomodate newer industrial uses. Most of these are based on real industries, although no attempt has been made to model the prototype structures. A few are named for friends, too.
This is Wilkinson-Kompass, an industrial supplier offering mill supplies, tools, hardware, and iron and steel:
John Bertram Co., manufacturing machine tools (lathes, drill presses, milling machines, etc.):
Evell Casket Co., supplying coffins of all types (only partially modelled. Its siding is part of an industrial staging yard):
P&M Languay Ltd., (Pump and Compressor Division):
Elfrida Stove Works, originally a maker of wood stoves of all types, but currently (late '30s) offering furnaces for home and industry. A modern version might also offer air conditioning units:
[IMG]http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/doctorwayne/structures%20and%20a%20few%20b%20and%
OMG Wayne, I was just about to suggest GERN.
Hi, do not mean to criticise, but, I could not see an electronics manufacturing firm in the 1990’s using railcars.
Using motor vehicles, yes, semi-trucks and box trucks. Shipments of parts would not warrent box cars, too damn big, also too slow.
I would change the product.
Then again, it is your railroad.
There’s a wal-Mart distribution center served by rail in Flagstaff, AZ. Of course, it’s about as big as my layout[(-D].
I have two photos of the Bassett furniture factory having box cars either spotted or pulled. One features a modern pair of NS diesels. The other plant switcher is a Y-5. Moral? A lot of present-day industries do their thing in 19th and early 20th century buildings.
You can always put noncommittal signage on a building, and spot box cars at their loading door. Just what does Smith & Jones, Inc. produce and/or distribute? Only their customers know for sure.
The hardest part, on the average model railroad, is finding space for buildings big enough to justify rail traffic. I’ve seen too many cases of a modern 60 foot box car spotted at a building that, empty of all else, wouldn’t have the car’s cubic capacity.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Kind of on topic, but if you can’t decide on a specific industry and/or space is an issue, you might try building interchangeable modules. On my N scale layout I have more industries that I want to service then I have space for. For example, I have a grain elevator module that can pop out and be replaced with a feed (as in animal) distribution center. Similar scenery but a completely different industry and rolling stock needs (grain hoppers vs. boxcars). As long as you build the permanent (non-module) scenery rather generic or with a similar theme in mind for the industries you want to module then the sky’s the limit with what industries, operations, and rolling stock your model railway can service/use. I got the idea from an article written in “N Scale Magazine” by Bob Ferguson.
Happy modeling and good luck!
Don.
Lumber and bricks.
Looking back to the February 1961 Model Railroader (I picked up this back issue in 1965 for 50 cents) – There are two coming CR&T “industries” to include: “A factory for those pickle cars” and to power the traction is “Traction substations.” As the article title indicates, pickle cars need a pickle factory (which will have a fairly small layout footprint).
So, build a factory/industry around a type of railroad car. P.S.: Don’t overlook what goes into covered hoppers, or a milk train/dairy, an ice house, or; team tracks/depot/ramps for a Pennsy TrucTrain’s TOFC (Trailer On Flat Car), etc.
Another idea is today’s, 2014 Short Line Award – Reading Blue Mountain & Northern, resurrected from much of fallen flag, Reading Railroad. Note the industries on the first page alone from coal to the recently built spur to the new (and quite large) Yuengling Brewery (also the USA’s oldest brewery), and other small business industries that require forklifts. Also see the many types of Passenger Excursions at their Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway – If you’ve got the layout room and the urge to do scenery, bridges, foilage, etc.
The problem with the Squire Dingee pickle station is that it was a dying breed in 1961. A few years later they would all be gone. [|(]
Traction substations (or any other kind of electric substation) receive and deliver by wire. Not much electricity shipped by rail. [:-^]
There’s a re-purposed substation in Rapid City, SD. It is a factory (a place where things are made) but doesn’t ship by rail - either way. Jewelry (Landstrom’s Black Hills Gold, specifically) isn’t made in (box)carload lots. (They used the old substation because of its bombproof construction. Getting in would be a problem for an Abrams tank. [8D])
Shortly after WWII a lot of industries were set up in large size Quonset huts, bought cheap as government surplus. A few still exist, but most have been replaced by more modern rectangular steel or plain concrete buildings. [Y]
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Hmm…if you mean a modern industry that both receives AND ships boxcars. I think those are few. Boxcars are not used as much in the modern era, whereas hoppers and tank cars have taken over.
Perhaps a paper mill that makes new paper out of recycled paper. Any 50 foot boxcar in…hi cube 50 footer out.
There are a lot more out there than you might think, most of them pretty big to enjoy rail service and large enough to need multi car deliveries. Problem is many of these modern factories are located just behind the tree line that hides them from the highway so unless you know they are there, you don’t know they are there.
If I can get the link right, here are several:http: //binged.it/1sYLXWd
Just trace the number of spurs heading in various directions.
jim
Jim, in my area the rail-served industry might be ten miles from the highway, but still cleaarly visible over the greasewood bushes. Tree? Wazzat? You can count the naturally growing serious trees on any square mile of Clark County without taking your other hand out of your pocket.
The area I model is diametrically opposite. Stick a seedling in the ground, then jump back out of the way. Amazing what a difference adequate rainfall makes.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)