More than a poll--What industries do you use and how do your goods and products flow?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

I’m trying to get a handle on operations so that I can design a bunch and build once, so to speak. I’m planning on a logging operation with a mill, pulp plant, and lumber yard. The loggin operation cuts trees and sends lumber to the lumber yard and pulp to the pulp mill. Both the lumber yard and pulp mill have outgoing shipments. Of course, there will be supplies delivered to the pulp and logging operations, but that is as far as I got.

What industries do you model and how do the products and services flow on your layout? I’m going to re-read the operations post next.

2

Well, my operations are based on what the New Haven did for the same line, namely the Boston to Providence portion of their Shore Line Route.

The New Haven was once described as a large switching terminal, and that was mostly correct for post-WWII. Factories started moving away from New England, long the industrial heartland of America. They headed South and West for the cheaper labor and fewer heating bills. As a result of this, New England became a place where things came in, but didn’t go out…a mostly consumer-type economy rather than an industrial one.

This means that the New Haven would have a lot of cars coming in loaded, but most of them would go out empty. And if you know your haulage rates, you would know that the originating RR makes the most money on a shipment (since they would use their own boxcars), and the terminating RR makes the least as they have to pay per diem on the other road’s boxcar, and pay to have it spotted. And if there is no load going out, they they have to pay to move it back to the interchange point, too. This is a losing proposition, and this is the prime reason why the NH went under.

So on my layout, I have a western staging yard I call “Cedar Hill” (the name of the NH’s primary freight yard in New Haven, CT) located just west of Providence passenger station (the real distance to Cedar Hill from Providence is about 100 miles). This staging yard is where almost all of my loads come from. Things like western fruit reefers, cement, coal, lumber, livestock (not much), finished goods, etc. I have a bunch of industries that take these cars and don’t ship out anything.

However, I do have some other industries or sidings that are the exception to the rule. Things like TOFC, fresh fish. and oil delieveries were originating loads on the NH, and therefore are the same on my layout.

In short, I model based on the prototype situation that the NH found itself in, post-WWII.

Paul A. Cutler III

3

On the Operations Road Show layout, we have a number of industries:

  • Since we’re modeling the Wabash in rural Indiana, most of our towns have some kind of farm co-op that ships corn or grain. A couple of them receive fertilizer and, in season, seed. The corn is shipped off-layout to the Anderson elevator in Toledo, ADM in Decatur, Ill., or to the largest industry on the layout, the Anheuser Busch yeast plant on the east side of Lafayette, Ind. Since it’s the early 1960s, we’re still using boxcars to haul most of the grain and corn.

  • Auto parts plants - We have a couple of small ones. One receives metal castings, but both of them ship parts off-layout east to Ford in Dearborn, Mich. and west to a plant in Kansas City in boxcars.

  • We have a good-sized stone quarry (large enough to have its own switcher). It ships crushed stone to customers both east and west in open-top hoppers. We fill the cars at the quarry with actual crushed stone, then when the cars end up in the Fiddle Yard, we empty them. I’d say we ship eight to ten cars of stone out a day. It gets a car of coal in for its power house every few days.

  • There are several fuel dealers which get heating oil and propane in tank cars inbound from connections off-layout to the west.

  • We have team tracks in three towns- just about anything can turn up there as an inbound or outbound load.

  • The big industry is the Anheuser Busch yeast plant. About a dozen boxcars of corn go in each day, and one boxcar of bagged yeast comes out to be shipped to a brewery off-layout. The by-products include several tank cars per day of corn sweetener, and a boxcar of bagged citric acid. About one boxcar a week of paper bags is shipped in. The tank cars are sent off-layout via an interchange to the Monon to be cleaned before being loaded at A-B. This plant is on the edge of the yard at Lafayette and is switched a couple of times a day.

  • The Wilson meat packing plant on the west side of Lo

4

I model a small secondary line of the Milwaukee Road, and a branch off of it. Industries are:

Zinc Mining - open hoppers out with crushed zinc or tailings to a concentrator plant off line. Covered hoppers of milled zinc outbound. Some mining machinery inbound.

Swift meat packing - reefers outbound with ‘swing beef’, inbound stock cars(cattle), and inbound shipments of bagged salt, boxes, etc.

Power plant - inbound steam coal.

Feed mill - inbound covered hoppers of feeds, fertz, bagged feeds.

Lumber yard - inbound box cars of lumber.

Elevator - outbound grain, inbound bags, supplies.

Fuel dist - inbound tank cars of fuel, inbound hoppers of coal, inbound boxcars of grease(drums).

Bldg contractor - inbound hoppers of coal, sand, gravel, etc

Jim Bernier

5

Oil Refinery:
Crude oil in by rail and pipeline; ethanol, tertiary amyl methyl ether, sulfuric acid, sodium hydroxide, and FCC catalysts in by rail.
Gasoline, diesel fuel, and jet fuel out by rail, truck, and pipeline. LPG, benzene, hexane, toluene, asphalt, and coke out mainly by rail with some out by truck.

Concrete plant:
Portland cement in by rail. Gravel and sand in by truck. Water in by pipeline. Concrete out by truck.

Lumber mill:
Logs in by truck.
Plywood, wood studs, saw dust. poles out by rail and truck.

Tomato processing plant:
Tomatos, various spices in by truck.
Tomato sauce, tomato paste, diced tomatos, katchup, barbeque sauce, and pizza sauce out by rail and truck.

Packing shed:
Fruits and vegetables in by truck.
“Cleaned” and packaged fruits and vegetables out by rail and truck.

Intermodal terminal: containers and trailers in and out by rail and truck,

Vehicle terminal: vehicles in by rail and out by truck.

Team track: free for all.

6

I’m modeling part of a transcontinental main line that goes through the Sierra Nevada mountains, so there’s not a lot of ‘on-line’ industry in the particular area I model, except for cattle and timber and some mining. But since the line I’m modeling does ship a great deal of produce from the Central Valley to the east and midwest, I have an icing dock at Deer Creek (my major yard) for re-icing reefers, which allows for some major switching every time an eastbound reefer extra comes through. Other than that, I have seasonal cattle movements between low and high-country pasture. As I expand the layout, I’ll have some lumber movements and hopefully a little mining going on, but that’s kind of in the future right now. So except for what I’ve described, I’m usually just watching through traffic.
Tom

7

My layout plans is just a 2x8 that I will be putting up this year. However I have some specific industries that are undergoing final planning and construction on the work bench.

1- Interchange track. The railroad will hand off these cars to the next forwarding railroad. There will be cars brought in for either bridge traffic or final delivery on my territory.

2- Team Track currently set up for TOFC and may include a heavy flatcar loading area. This track will also have a platform to handle anything the public may want to put on a train.

3- Freight house LCL (Less than Car Load) freight. Various local business bring freight from the region until it is assembled into carloads going to Chicago… or Philadelphia or whatever.

4- Grain elevator, feed mill with a fertilizer area. Gotta have a way to feed the stock yards nearby and a way to process the “output” from the cattle and maintain the local farmers supply of equitment, seeds, feed etc etc etc

5- Stock yards. I have plans to accomodate 4 stock cars at a time. This will assist in the 36 hour law where cattle must be fed, watered and exercised as they proceed to the city and eventual slaugtering. If I can find room I may establish a stockyard auction and ship in chickens and hogs as well (why not? hee haw and all of that)

6- Now we are getting big and need a cold storage for that meat and produce coming off the florida north runs and by ship. The reefers will need to be iced as well. Seafood will probably be shipped from here as well going west.

7 Finally a very dense space filled with gas tanks, oil depot and coal dealer. I aim to pack all of this in as small a space as possible and have just enough track to serve the proper tank cars. (Oil, Kerosense, Propane, Gas, Deseil, Coal etc)

8 if I have enough space I will work in a general merchandise warehouse and a lumber operation to feed a factory district with pallets, boxes, crates wood for homes etc…

8

My layout is centered mostly around agricultural products and interchange. The Sacramento Northern’s main freight business was seasonal harvesting of fruit, vegetables, nuts, milk, etcetera–my layout is set in late summer/early fall to simulate the busy portion of the traffic cycle. Because of Sacramento’s central location, there was a lot of interchange between the two Class I’s and the two short lines in town, in addition to transfer between trains and ships using the river port.

Since I model only one city, inbound traffic of agricultural products is brought in via staging or interchange. Industries modeled are fruit & vegetable packing houses, a dairy products factory, a nut processing plant, a freight house/team track, and of course an interchange.

Fruit & vegetable traffic can enter from any direction–via interchange, or North End staging (a track in the yard that simulates southbound trains entering town.) Typically they arrive in a refrigerator car, except for nuts, which arrive in boxcars.

Fruit and vegetable traffic, once canned, is generally shipped out in boxcars–empty reefers are moved to interchange or the yard for the next outbound train.

Sugar beets were a big industry around here but there were no refineries in town–but I do sometimes move a hopper from north to south to simulate beets being sent to the refinery, and have a couple cars marked “sugar service” that go north–and sometimes to the canneries, to provide sugar for those lovely Jordan almonds or sugar-enhanced fruit products (this was before the days when they put corn syrup in everything.)

About your lumber operation: A lumber mill does not ship out pulp to a pulp mill–they ship out pulpwood, essentially small logs. Here’s a picture of a pulp car:

These logs, generally bits too small to turn into dimensional lumber, were stacked on a flatcar and sent to the pulp mill to be smushed up.

9

There’s another byproduct you can ship out of a sawmill, one I’ve rarely seen mentioned- lumber “butts”. Those are the cut-off end pieces of hardwood logs that are left when the log is cut to a standard length before being cut into boards.

A number of mills, at least in the northern Great Lakes area, would ship the butts out to charcoal plants in gondolas. They weren’t stacked like pulpwood, they’d just be dumped into the gondola.

'just learned about this over the weekend.

-Fritz Milhaupt
Web Guy, Operations Road Show
http://www.railsonwheels.com/ors

10

The use of mill scraps for pulp and other products is comparatively recent–for the most part, things like sawdust and trimmed-off end pieces were simply burned in the plant incinerator. More recent concerns about air pollution and efficient use of waste materials have promoted those kinds of uses. At a mill in SpaceMouse’s era, it just would have gone into the incinerator.

11

Just wanted you all to know I am paying close attention.

12

I model a (now-deceased) short line.

Outbound: Its only major on-line shipper was a large quarry. For some years, there was a fairly substantial manufacturer of wooden window frames, sashes and doors. There also was a small producer of metal farm implements. Otherwise, most outbound shipments were agricultural products, with a cannery and a flour mill as well as mixed products from the small farms.

Inbound: Other than the quarry, inbound traffic was more substantial than outbound, and included logs, dimensional lumber, building supplies, agricultural products such as feed and fertilizer, fuels (coal, diesel, heating oil, gasoline), and general merchandise. The online mostly-inbound industries include building supply houses, sawmills and agricultural-products businesses.

13

My layout revolves around a central point, BNSF North Yard in Saginaw, TX. double ended staging represents trains coming from Amarillo to the West and Temple/Houston to the East. I have small yards for interchange traffic with UP at Fort Worth, the Fort Worth and Western at north Fort Worth, and the Wichita, Tillman and Jackson at Wichita falls. I Also model a small version of the Wichita Falls yard.

Online industries and transfer jobs are switched by locals working out of North Yard and Wichita Falls Yard. Online industries (and their car capacities) include three grain elevators–one very large one–hold 4, 2, and 12 covered hoppers respectively, two oil distributors hold 3 and 2 tank cars respectively (it is Texas after all), a lumber yard holding 1 centerbeam or bulkhead flat car and a lumber distributor holding 3 cars of these types, a grocery distribution warehouse holding 1 reefer or box car, a furnature distributor holding 1 box car, a pipe company holding 1 flat car, Trinity Industries plant where they build covered hoppers holding 2 incoming boxcars, flat cars, or coil cars/gondolas and 3 outgoing covered hoppers, a small town ag supplies dealer holding 1 boxcar and 1 tank car for anhydrous or LPG, a company that sells bagged cement, mortor, drywall mud, etc. holding 1 boxcar, a tool and die manufacturer holding 1 boxcar or coil car/gondola, and a team track used primarily by construction companies to receive lumber shipments holding 2 cars total.

I forward cars using 4-cycle way bills. The interchanges allow me to increase my total number of cars handled and to add a variety of car types and loads that online industries do not handle.

Ron

14

One of the more interesting industries on my layout doesn’t even exist! It’s just a dead end tunnel running about two feet under another section of layout. But, to my imagination it’s what ever industry I want on the other side of that tunnel. Coal mine, logging industry, paper mill or farmer’s co-op. Whatever I need for that particular train is what the phantom industry becomes. No building needed! [:D]

15

In other words… a underground interchange =)

16

Bridge traffic let the other Railroads supply the industries.

17

Well let’s start with the type of cars I like.I like boxcars,covered hoppers,reefers,tanks and steel coil cars.So my industries reflects those cars.
I have the following::
1,Pillsbury plant
2.A meat processor
3.A tannery
4.Produce distributor
5.A grocery distributor
6.A tobacco,wine and whiskey distributor
7.A steel door manufacturer
8.A tire distributor
9.A casket distributor
10.A rubber pellet manufacturer
11.A knitting company
12.A potato chip manufacturer.
13.Landmark
14.Lumber company.
None of these industries served each other…All inbound shipments comes through interchange.

===============================================================
Wanting to add the following:
1.A dry dog food plant
2.A paint manufacturer.

18

Brakie - you stole my suggestion! [:D]

I am going to put in a pet food plant. Only mine will be canned. Most ingredients arrive via truck except an occasional tank car of liquid ingredients. Outbound, depending on product mix, we can generate up to 10 rail cars a day in a small footprint building, something like the City Classics Smallman Warehouse or DPM window warehouse.

Tom

19

I’m still in the planing stages of a branch operation based upon the SP Kentucky House Branch. Per my prototype:

Incoming traffic

Empty refrigrator cars for citrus and grapes

Empty lumber flats

Empty boxcars for alfafa,rice, general service and cement service

Empty tank cars to serve winery

Empty hopper for limestone service

Outgoing traffic

Cement

Limestone

Citrus and Grapes

Finished lumber

Processed grains

Raw grains for livestock feed

20

I am going to model industries that actually were here in Ft Wayne in 1900. My primary industry is a grocer’s warehouse.
IN
reefers - meat, dairy, vegetables
ventilated boxcar - fruits, vegetables
boxcar - soap, office supplies, paper bags
OUT
all empty

Another industry is a meat packing plant. Of course, some of the meat goes across town in reefers.

Sometimes a gondola full of [CENSORED] goes from the meat packer to Bash Fertilizer. Bash brings in any kind of car you want and ships out tank cars, boxcars loaded with fertilizers.

A soap factory brings in boxcars full of … umm, what IS soap made of? … and boxes and wrappers. Also tank cars carrying lye. The boxcars leave carrying crates of packaged soap. The tank cars leave empty. Sometimes a loaded boxcar goes across town.

An asphalt plant brings in tank cars full of petrol and sends out tank cars full of asphalt (maybe not the same tank cars, need to do more research on that).

The interurbans they are a’ building! Construction supplies, road-fixing stuff (bricks, cobblestones), ballast, ties, rails come in by boxcar and gondola. Occasionally a new electric car comes in by flatcar. Scraps go out, probably by gondola.

General Electric brings in motor parts by boxcar, empties them and reloads the car with motors and light bulbs and such. Sometimes a flatcar is required for big motors.

Steel Dredge builds, well, dredges and steam shovels and such. They bring in parts by boxcar and ship out whole dredges by flatcar.

Aichele Monuments brings in big chunks of stone by flatcar or gondola and ships out empties.

I have tried to ‘chain’ some of the industries together so a given car can float around the layout and earn revenue before disappearing off the interchange track. Sometimes it works!