I am looking to build a very small shelf layout based on the Santa Fe in East Texas in the 1950’s. It will probably be only 1 or 2 industries and a depot. I know there were paper mills, sawmills and wood treatment plants but I would welcome any suggestions for other industries. If they have multiple types of freight car that is good. Also, do the wood treatment plants all have narrow guage rail service? Is there a specific resource on the internet for these plants?
EAST TEXAS TRAFFIC ON THE SANTA VACA & RWY The main scene on the layout is JOHNSTON, a courthouse square town on the East Texas secondary line of the in the Piney Woods.Although through traffic generates most revenue for real railroads, local traffic generates much of the interest on a model railroad_NEOLA staging represents the connection at Sommerville to the north-south mainline through . Traffic from east to , , Dallas-Fort Worth, , , and the West Coast goes to Neola.LOST RIVER staging is and the border country.
The answer depends, in part, on where in East Texas you plan to focus your layout. If in the Piney Woods, timber related industries are far and away the most common. There are lots of resources for your area of interest, and I’d begin by by Googleing something like ‘east texas lumber railroad’. I’ve seen great on-line photos of these industries. Also, they were not all narrow gauge.
A possible industry outside, or on the edge of, the Piney Woods would be a cotton gin and loading facility for cotton bales. There is a book “Bale 'O Cotton” published by Texas A&M Press a few years ago that is worth a look through if you decide to go that direction. Probably best tracked down through the local library.
Oh. You might consider a utility pole treatment plant. It would be a plant where poles were turned and shaped and then treated with creosote. They were a rather messy and sprawling operation, but if you choose to do that you may have a unique industry in the hobby.
Hello Steve, In the 1950s the Santa Fe had its own tie and pole treatment plant in Somerville, Texas. It had been built in 1897 and is still active – or was when I passed through a year or so ago – but is now operated by Herzog, a private rail contractor. Originally it had its own two-foot gauge railway, but that was standard gauged in 1952. Plant switchers in the 1950s were four-wheel industrial gasoline or diesel locomotives built by Plymouth and Whitcomb. Somerville is where the Somerville District connects the Santa Fe’s network of East Texas branch lines to the Second District of the Southern Division of the Gulf, Colorado & Santa Fe, the mainline route between Fort Worth and Galveston. so long, Andy