Since I’m going to soon build a larger layout, would it look too odd having only five small industires on a 14x12’ HO design? If I should add more, what one(s) in a Virginia layout in the 1980s?
I currenlty have coal, junk hauling, intermodal (in the yard), grain, oil, and food processing spread out on the 13x7 HO layout. There was PLENTY of room between them since they occupy small footprints (e.g., a small machine shop and gantry crane for junk operations, etc…)
Yes, it’s my layout, but can’t decide about what makes the most sense.
IMO, a layout looks more realistic if the rail served buildings are large, rather than small. Most kits produced are smaller than what it would take to justify real rail service, so what you can do to make the industries larger would LOOK better, IMO.
Of course, if the industries are larger, that reduces the space between them. If your layout is trying to depict a lot of distance to travel between industires, the LOOk of the layout might not be consistent with how you want to OPERATE it. Meaning, a layout that depicts several miles of track serving small building might have to be changed to depict only a few miles serving larger buildings.
I suspect the operations of your layout would be the same regardless, so for appearence purposes, I would always lean towards having larger industries, not more industries, and have the layout of your size depict more of a industrial park or small town/suburban area.
You could also load up the layout with a lot of large buildings and model a small section of downtown Milwaukee, for example.
My simple answer is, when you expand the layout, I would make the industires larger and not increase the number of industries.
Larger industries with multiple car spots (or even multiple tracks to each) are more reflective of real-life railroading and are often more realistic than a larger number of smaller industries.
“Spots” include individual doors on a building, dumps or spouts for commodity loading, etc.
Team tracks may take a wide variety of cars and require no structure beyond (perhaps) a loading dock.
An interchange track with another “imagined” railroad can increase operating options in minimal space.
A “clean-out” track is another “no structure” car spotting location and creates extra movements.
Thanks all for the helpful suggestions. I might combine some small buildings to make larger footprints. Putting buildings along the same spur opens up more locations.
Yes, I am planning on doing an interchange b/c that offers even more operating opportunities.
Some want to have many industries, but I like the idea of conveying distance with space between places. To each their own.
You could mock up some large industries and more small industries by making them from card board. Then try them out before commiting to one or the other.
MR had an article about using cardboard or even space holders for structures. Great idea! They require adhering to certain dimensions and I hate having to redo track b/c strctures don’t fit. Not doing that again!
If you’re like me and I think most modelers, you like to have as many variety of freight cars as possible. So when combining smaller buildings into one larger industry, try to think of what type of business would support a variety of cars.
That may be more detail or plausibility than you want to mess with, but its a good way to have both large realistic looking industries and a variety of cars.
On my new layout, a major business is an asphalt shingle producer. Such a business is here locally, and it receives tank cars of asphalt and small hoppers of coarse sand granuals. Another business is a poultry bedding producer. It receives boxcars of recyclable paper and tank cars of clay slurry, as well as occaisonal hoppers of powdered clay. That’s two large industries supporting five different freight cars. And then there is the farm supply dealer who gets fertilizer and feed in two different types of cars, as well as a team track that can get a number of different cars.
I’m not sure that folks are going to like this comment, and it’s not really directed at anyone at all (particularly not anyone here). But it’s been on my mind for awhile and I feel like in need to get it off my chest. Please note it’s just observational and editorial in nature.
Each year my family takes a long cross country road trip. This year we did 5000+ miles and 17 states. Last year we did about the same mileage and 18 states. Of course, trains and train watching play a pretty big part of it (in as much as seeing a moving trains counts for 100,000 points in our “I spy” game (Second only to Airstream trailers at 1,000,000 points.))
Anyway, most of the trains we observe are nowhere near any industry. They’re near agriculture (well I guess technically agriculture IS industry). I’d dare say that 85-90% of the (mainline) trackage in this country is through, corn (or wheat or soy bean) fields, forests and cow pastures. If folks wanted to be truly prototypical with their railroads, they’d model mostly those type of landscapes.
Now with that being said, that sort of scene really wouldn’t be that visually appealing or very fun to model and wouldn’t be that much fun to operate on. So please ignore the previous comments.
I understand your observation, Lonnie, and agree. Trains with many cars carrying milled lumber under plastic run through urban settings, and also along miles and miles of treeless prairie. Potash-laden hoppers run through the Canadian Rockies on their way by coal mines, coal trains, and winding mountains and tunnels where nobody mines potash. Japanese cars, by the thousands on ready tracks at the Port of Vancouver where none of them are made.
I don’t know if Byron would agree with this, but I think he might partly: too many people ignore the opportunities for staging and for a functional yard/classification facility. Those two items require thought, skill in building, and provide a lot of satisfying building while constructing the layout. Later, the yard can provide hours of interest if it isn’t just a ladder of parking tracks for trains not being run at the moment. Think of your yard, and you should have one, as a type of industry…a railroad industry. Not lumber, or automobiles per se, but compiling through-freight that has to get to a customer whose finger has begun to tap on the desk top.
My last comment is that, in a confined space of yon typical layout, building interest and variety never hurts. By all means, do make grander scale and more realistic rail-served industries and tracks that provide the service. That’s actually a very good idea in my opinion. Build that larger footprint into your plan now. But, do it later. Meanwhile, if you are adding another 30% or more trackage and surface area to model, my advice would be to add one other spur, even a switchback if you have the stomach for some hills, and place a couple, not one, small industries there. Be it a sawmill, a modest coal extraction facility (AKA a “mine”), or cabinet factory that needs a couple of flat cars of milled lumber each week…you’ll want more to do occasionally than to just set cars at your large industry.
If OP is wanting to run trains only and not switch, any type of background scenery will do. With or without buildings. With or without classification yards. Doesn’t matter. You don’t have to have buildings to have a layout.
Based on the layout sizes which you mention, I’m guessing that you’re referring to an around-the-room type of layout, rather than an island-style.
If that’s the case, you can double the size of an industry built from a kit simply by using the two long walls spliced together on the side that will be visible, and replacing the unseen side with sheet styrene. Most of the industries on my layout are built in this manner, and I buy .060" styrene in 4’x8’ sheets to make the back walls and, in many cases, new roofs for the expanded industry. It’s also useful for adding foundations and loading docks, along with road surfaces and retaining walls.
For any industry served by rail, bigger is usually better (more believeable).
This is Walthers Vulcan Manufacturing, built with both long walls facing the aisle. I added the foundation and new roof using plain sheet styrene, as mentioned…
To increase the size even further, I added a powerhouse and loading dock for trucks, made from leftover pa
As always, great contribution Wayne. Kitbashing styrene structures and scratchbuilding additions and details to those structures is one of my favorite parts of the hobby.
In a hobby where we are modeling a miniature world as a starting point, some belief has to be suspended to begin with. [Y]
One of the coolest stops of this years trip was Bailey Yard in North Platte, NE. I couldn’t begin to imagine how to even start to build a “functional” hump yard on a layout.
Agree, each is often a good idea, and the function can be combined, where one or two tracks of a yard are modeled as interchange points with a connecting railroad. Without a track plan from the Original Poster, hard to know what makes sense to suggest as additions.
Great job on those buildings Wayne. I’m going to have to mark that posting to rememver to look back when I am building my new layout. Actually I need to be considering what industries and buildings i can use,…in the planning stage right now.
Planning is important as my space in limited. I have tons of kits I bought over the years, and I will likely only be able to utilize a small number of them. http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/11/t/264616.aspx?page=1
BTW are you in a big enough city that you can source large sheets of styrene plastic? there use to be a specility plastics dealer in Rockville MD (just outside DC), but they closed their doors. I’m living in Florida now and the town has no such plastics dealers.
The hobby shops use to carry a good supply of Evergreen or Plastruct products, but it seems this is thinning out as well.
