Hypothetical ONLY! Possible industries if Kalmbach published an "Industries Along the Tracks 5"?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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Note the word hypothetical in the thread title, I am NOT saying there will be a “Industries Along The Tracks 5”. I am trying to make it clear that I am not Jeff Wilson (author of the Series), nor am I a representative from Kalmbach Publishing.

That said, I do like this 4 volume series of industry overviews, and after re-reading them I was wondering what other industries could be covered in a “potential” future volume. Each book covers 6 industries, featuring at least one profiled industry that no longer exist (e.g. Coal Gas and Old Style Brickyards) or no longer uses rail freight to any extent (Sugar Beets, Livestock). Some profiled industries have eventually gotten their own book (Livestock and Meatpacking).

The proposed industries should be at least somewhat interesting (well, yeah, for a long time a lot of rail freight was “load this boxcar with these crates/boxes at a distributor’s generic-looking warehouse loading dock, and eventually unload those crate/boxes from that boxcar at a receiver’s generic-looking warehouse dock”).

The industries each existing volume covers:
Industries (One - 2004) Grain, Petroleum, Coal, Automobile Manufacturing, Produce, Livestock

Industries 2 (2006) Coal Customers, Milk and Dairy, Breweries, Iron Ore, Paper, Package/LCL Traffic

Industries 3 (2008) Ethanol, Cement, Sugar Beets, Canning, Team Tracks/Transload, Intermodal

Industries 4 (2010) Coal Gas, Salt, Old Style Brickyards, Quarries, Lumber, Waterfront Operations

So, what industries could be included in a hypothetical volume 5? (Remember, I haven’t seen any reference to such a book on the web, nor do I know of any plans for one) Come up with as many suggestions as you like.

I can only think of 5 potential ones right now (so it’s lucky I’m not writing such a book…)

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2

How about a Propane distribution facility. I drive by one of those every week when going to the MRR club. There is unloading racks for three cars, all contained inside a fenced area with a gate so the RR cars can enter and exit. The propane is stored in about a dozen large horizontal propane tanks. There is a small office building on the grounds as well. Everything in in a fenced area.

3

Lime.

Massive, unique structures. Fits a good century’s timeframe. Uses several different car types (covered hoppers from the earliest days of covered hoppers, boxcars, gondoals with big cube-ish containers), has inbound and outbound loads (era dependent), and so on.

4

In my working life I dealt in international logistics. There is a company in the Vancouver area that always had big shipments several months prior to every space shuttle mission. All software and computers for every flight would go from this place and on occasion things like top secret satellites, various pieces of equipment from very small to quite large would need to be dealt with.

Believe it or not things like software and computers for the shuttle were simply put in the mail. Canada Post were very good at moving special shipments. However some things were trucked to Houston or Florida and other things were put in a Boxcar as this facility had a siding.

A couple of times some really large items had to be moved and they couldn’t move these things on to a rail car at their building. So in the middle of the night it would be sneaked out and moved on a big flatbed down to the team track a couple of blocks away and loaded on to a suitable rail car.

So a nondescript warehouse putting out space bound items of some sort would be a good line side industry.

On a side note, I remember the engineer and conductor that were to pull the cars away after they were loaded said “I guess we can say we worked on the Shuttle program”. I said “ya me too”, and we all had a good laugh at 3 in the morning.

5

Farm equipment manufacturer, like a John Deere plant. Probably similar to the autos, though.

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I wouldn’t mind seeing the Cotton Industry represented.

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A focus on “universal industries” could be helpful to many small layout owners without room for interchanges otherwise… mine will be a Port Terminal circa 1946. If only I had room for a car ferry too…

Jim

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Booster segments did arrive by rail, actually. Literally one shipper and one receiver there.

Both NASA and SpaceX use Trackmobiles to move Atlas Vs and Falcon 9s, respectively, down at Cape Canaveral. Probably the oddest and rarest of moves.

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Jason, cotton & textiles were exactly where I was heading. When you look at this industry, you have an incredible range of activies from what seems like a mundane product. For example.

a. Cotton Gin – produces cotton & cotten seed which, could go to

b. Cotton compress – ships cotton

and

c. Oil Mill – ships fertilizer, cotton oil, and animal feed

d. Cotton mill, which depending on how integrated it is, could received cotton, and dyes, and ship finished cloth. (not to mention coal to run the mill)

e. Synthetics which ties back into the chemical industry someone else mentioned earlier, with all the links there between petroleum industry covered in a earlier book.

f. Cotton machinery manufacturers. One near where I grew up was more like a small steel mill.

g. Bonded cotton warehouses both received and shipped cotton.

There were several railroads that owed their existence through much of the 20th century to cotton. Someone has said the Piedmont & Northern averaged more than one mill per mile.

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Hi Everyone, checking back I see some pretty good ideas.

Propane - actually a cool suggestion, fairly common, and I’d throw in LNG and LPG (so they can cover those Pregnant Whale tank cars of the late 1960s). The only problem is does it differ wildly from Ethanol, which was covered in Vol3 (Ethanol also included inbound traffic of corn etc).

The Lime industry is an interesting one that didn’t occur to me. How different would it compare to, say, Phosphates, Carbon Black, or even Coke (the charcoal kind)?

Farm Equipment - I thought about that, RMC did an article on a farm equipment plant awhile back, it is (or was) a lot like Automobile manufacturing, except on a smaller scale industry wide, and most of the vehicles going by rail were shipped secured to flat-cars vs first box-cars, then auto racks.

Space ships components, I was kinda of including them in the oversized loads (along with those Boeing aircraft parts shipped by rail). I know the NYT had an article about SpaceX purchasing rail-cars for use in transporting it’s space craft components -but are they actively doing so?

Jim, what did you mean by “A focus on “universal industries” could be helpful to many small layout owners without room for interchanges otherwise” - Jeff Wilson did do team tracks in Vol 3. Did you mean something else?

The Textile industry, that’s a good one, and used to be big - I see Jason & JMB got that fully covered (shame on me for missing it, I used to do pretty well with the textile industry (cotton/wool) when playing Railroad Tycoon 2 back in the day). Heck, by the 1960s you probably could incorporate plastic resin shipments for nylon and polyesters…

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I haven’t heard anything, but I do have professional contacts at SpaceX. Maybe I’ll make a phone call and find out.

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What about a quarry? Granite or Marble, both crushed and in slabes to be polished. Open hoppers for the crushed, covered for the dust and small pieces for aggregate and flat cars and gondolas for the slabs.

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Just thinking of some local industries I remember, all rail served when I was a kid, and all offshoots in one way or another of animals and animal by products: 1… tanneries; 2. Glue works; 3. Fertilizer

Dave Nelson

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Pictured is Southeastern Container, Corp. It is ownhed by a group of Coca Cola bottlers and the plant manufactures plastic bottles

.

I watched the plant start with two silos for the raw material, plastic pellets, which were trucked in until it now has 10 silos and a double siding.

Bob

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I;m looking for an industry on my new expansion of my layout that will take tank cars, boxcars and maybe an occasional gondola or two. A friend of mine and I were brainstorming the other day and we came up with a couple>

Flourescent light/light fixture fixture factory.

A chemical company that specializes in the synthesis and/or manufacture of pharmaceutical or food grade additives or ingredients. (may even take covered hoppers.

Just some thoughts.

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Just a few thoughts based on some rail served industries in my area: glass factory, pet food, rubber roofing company, military installation, magazine/periodical publisher

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Let’s think outside the normal box.

1.A reclaim plant.In scrap rubber out rubber pellets.

2.A steel burial vault company.In sheet steel.Out gons of waste.

3.Garden hose manufacturer.In J-Flex,plastic pellets and rolls of sheet rubber.

4.Rubber toy company.In Rubber.

5.Tire distributor.

6.Creosote plant.In raw utility poles out treated poles.

7.Frozen food distributor.

8.Potato chip company.

There are many such industries that is usually outside the normal industry thought…

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A tile manufacturer. Wer have a Dal-Tile plant just east of town Covered hoppers of clay (their siding holds 3). Boxcars to take the finsished products out.

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I’d be interested in seeing this. The area I’m modeling is home to a chip manufacturer that I was hoping to model some day.

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Freight Transfer Facility, there used to be a big one near where I grew up, freight was unloaded from rail cars and transfered to semi-trucks. I got summer work there and remember it had a continuous freight trolley inside the facility that pulled carts loaded with item from cars to the trucks.

As much as it would benefit me more than anyone else I would love to see a book on the harbor transfer railroads that used to all over the NYC area, these were self-contained complete little railroads, only a few shadows remain today.