I remember seeing some track plans that included a larger industry with its own rail service - a small locomotive shuffling a few small cars from one building to another, for an example. I also remember seeing some pictures and plans of iron-something plants, where this was the way liquid iron traveled from or to furnace (or through).
While I think iron making stuff could be a bit much for the space I have on the section, a small local rail service would be neat and I seem to have space for that.
Any suggestions on industries that could require such service? Could you also describe, what would be the purpose of such service in the real life? Any directions on where to find equipment for such a thing in terms of both, rolling stock and building kits is also welcome.
Big elevators, sand pits, steel plants, really big car plants, refineries, harbors - lots of places that either do intra-plant movements from one building to another, or may need to move delivered cars through some kind of loader or unloader.
Some discussion on this from the Trains Magazine general forum:
Here’s a scrap yard/recycling center in Detroit that has its own switcher for moving gons from the interchange with the main line (Conrail Shared Assets) and the loading & scale tracks. It’s not a super huge facility, and could be modeled in a curve.
Most think steel as like basic steel. Blast furnaces, BOF and so on. They do take up a lot of space but there were many smaller foundries, and fabricating shops that you could use rr for either receiving, shipping or both. Another idea would be a disturber company, that could take only one building.
It seems to me the industries in a position to do that sort of thing would be very big operations, where the customer has a lot of intraplant moving to do, and needs to avoid incurring shipper charges. (It would cost less/be more convenient to get your own engines and crews than to pay the railroad’s switching charges.)
OTOH, in the steam era, a lot of plants had situations where a steam locomotive coming into the plant presented a fire hazard. In this case, the plant might get a “fireless cooker”, a locomotive that took a steam charge from a power plant (some used compressed air), to move cars within their facilities.
There were several of such plants in nearby Hamilton, Ontario in the not-too-distant past, including two steel plants (one with multiple locations throughout the city), Westinghouse (multiple locations), International Harvester, and National Steel Car. While all were large operations, any could be represented by backdrops and building flats, with only a small portion actually modelled. The latter one listed would be a good choice: they build rolling stock for mainly North America roads, and operated both steam and diesel locos, readily viewable from the street. Viewed from nearby roads, most of the plant appears as the ends of buildings (on a layout, they’d be jutting, at an angle, from the backdrop), but there are a couple of tracks, parallel to the adjacent street, where the freshly-painted finished cars are parked for pick-up by road locos. This would help to block the view of much of a space-saving representation of the actual plant, and provide an opportunity for you to display different car types and roadnames which might otherwise not be seen in your area.
In my neck of the woods, there were a number of industries with their own internal loco or car moving capabilities. The company I worked for had a number of old Quonset huts along a single spur for warehousing, and to fuel the powerhouse, and used a couple windlass mechanisms to move the cars back and forth. The old Thew Shovel plant had a self propelled crane similar to one periodically sold by Walthers to move cars within their property, at least in their main plant. The local steel plant has a roster of EMD switchers dating back to about 1948 (constantly updated and still working, with latest in remote control) that are in constant use. A nearby coal fired electrical generating plant used a fireless steamer untill sometime in the late 70s when it was replaced by what looks like a center cab Whitcomb 65 tonner. I think the fireless is now at the museum in Bellvue Ohio. The B&O had a car shop that seemed to have either the self propelled light crane. or even a home brew trackmobile type vehicle. And when I was in the AF, stationed at Forbes AFB, the warehouse area had something that looked like a GE 44 ton loco, but with the slanted cab to like in the European style.
Your railroad, you are the boss, justify it in your own mind, then go for it.
I will look into the replies during the week and see what I can use. An update to the modular/sectional track plan with three more modules is coming soon, too.
As has already been mentioned, it all comes down to economics. Any facility that needs to move cars around has to decide whether to pay the railroad to do it or to buy/lease their own engine, and then to fuel, maintain and operate it themselves. So, you’re free to decide how your industry decided to handle it. I’ve heard tell of a local quarry in New Hampshire where the owner bought an old used engine, just because he enjoyed running it himself.
On my layout, I’m planning a car float terminal. Loading and unloading the cars will be a job for a dedicated engine and crew.
It’s probably also worth mentioning that in the early years of the 20th century, there wasn’t a lot of internal-combustion powered heavy machinery available, and what was available was not that powerful,robust, or agile. In a lot of cases, companies built private railways to deal with situations that today would be handled by heavy duty trucks, cranes, bulldozers, bobcats, and similar equipment.