Do any of you have a one-industry railroad? Very few do. Dean Freytag (sp?) has a steel railroad based on a fictitious Ohio/NY line. A few people have coal. I think a full-blown oil refinery would be pretty cool.
The downside is lack of variety. But on the plus side, you can really do some cool prototypical modeling with just one industry!
Dave Vergun
My layout will include a large rail to barge grain silo with it’s own plant switcher and 2-4 sidings. Does that count?
Yep, that’s what I’ve got. My model railroad serves a solitary industry: an iron mine. I’ve got the mine itself, the storage and sorting yard, ore dock, and a single staging track. The majority of the traffic is ore cars being shuttled among mine, yard, and dock. The staging holds a few inbound cars for the mine. My layout concentrates more on bulk than variety. Simple yet entertaining operations.
My railroad serves a grain elevator because that’s all I have room for on a 4x8.
These would be really neat single industries to see on a model rr; things I’ve never seen modeled as single industries:
A full intermodal operation incl scale ships, gantry cranes, stack yards etc
A full oil refinery modeled after ones in LA or Houston
A military port with ships, trucks, tanks, ammuntion, etc (like at Blount Island, Florida, served by a reversing loop of CSX).
Some industries with huge warehouse structures would be boring, IMO, for example, a modern auto plant with closed rack cars. An older one with the open racks might be more interesting. On second thought, if it’s modeled right, practically nothing is boring.
Dave Vergun
The new layout 's first phase will be logging to sawmill with a few cars to a pulpmill.
Prototypically, the second phase would be abandonment when the timber is gone, but we’ll see. Maybe iron ore will be found up in the hills.
Wayne
My layout features a small freight transfer warehouse.
What goes on there is a mystery to me. There are two sidings which are usually full (mostly clear in this shot), there is no parking lot for the people who work there, and the place is not all that big. In fact those two box cars look like they could more than fill or empty the place! [%-)]
Humm, you think I should say something to the authorities or just keep the traffic moving? [:-^]
Unless I build that Mars thing, my next RR will be just that, based on the Muncie & Western serving Ball Co. (They made the canning jars and now are in aerospace!)
Their plant in Muncie had great trackwork, 3 track sidings and connections to both NW and C&O, so there is plenty of potential.
MR did an article on the Western Electric plant in Chicago that was also fantastic. It would have filled a garage by itself.
If the 44 tonners I bought back in 89 had held together, I might have had the M&W up and running now. Those small engines look great hauling 8-10 covered hoppers thru peoples backyards.
In his book “Where did the tracks go?” about railroads within the Adirondack Park, Michael Kudi***alks whimsically about the model railroad possibilities based on the Chateaugay branch of the D&H. Focusing on just the iron mines & furnaces in the Lyon Mountain area, he mentions ore trains, trains carrying iron ingots, trains carrying logs to the charcoal kilns, charcoal to the furnaces & of course freights carrying supplies to the village.
I may work it into my new layout in the future. To model it accurately though, I would need to periodically burn over all the scenery.
Wayne
I’m modeling the dairy farming industry of western NY state back in the 40’s. This one industry, if you want to call it that, generates a lot of traffic and different facilities to serve it. Feed store, dairy, farm machinery store, passenger and freight depot, fuel and oil supply and the list goes on. Lots of switching for locals and a lot of car variaties.
Iron ore is the primary on the Duluth Suprior and Southeastern. I’m doing the Marquite
division. The R.R. is fictious based on the iron roads of Michigans U. P. lemscate your layout sounds good. I’d like to chat about the subject. Drop me a line. E-mail at thebeverungs@ev1.net
Paul
I have a sorta two things, one is a town on a 2x8 shelf that has industries that sort of works together… Cattle Pens require feed, water, and slops to keep em going. There is a icing platform, feed and grain mill that handles both covered hoppers and grain loaded boxcars inbound and out. A gas facility that handles propane and ammonia etc and so on.
One major industry was the Dominos Sugar refinery, it turned into a massive factory on paper and too big for my space. What I am trying to do is cut it down to about 8 freight cars all together on 3 sidings. I may be forced to use flange squealing 15" curves to fit this next to the sea food packing and cannery as well as the big Walthers barge that carries traffic to and from the steel mill, refinery, Coal dock and Gas/electric works.
Once I get more room in the future I will be able to branch out to model other types of industries. Even with the compression I am beginning to think that the planned two car garage is never going to be big enough.
You certainly don’t have to have things that way–my railroad would fit comfortably into a 4x8 layout three times over (1x6 with 1x1 “wings” at each end, in HO) and I currently have three industries with five possible freight destinations–one spur serves a cannery, one serves a bottling plant and the last a team track. On the last two of the three, space beyond the industry is used as interchange tracks with other railroads.
There are plenty of possibilities for low-space or no-space industries–for an interchange, all you need is the track! For a team track, some room for the track, an unloading ramp/platform, and maybe a truck and some boxes is all you need–include a crane for unloading cars if you want to get fancy. An “off the side of the layout” industry can be suggested rather than shown, or portrayed as a flat on the backdrop (like my cannery–it’s a foot or so wide but only 1" thick!)
One-industry railroads can be interesting–logging is a popular subject for many model railroads, especially narrow-gaugers, but even they can have a variety of things going on–logging operations in the hills, moving cars around within the sawmill, interchange operations with off-line railroads to bring the wood to market, etcetera.
My model railroad will mostly be focused around agricultural products, but there is a wealth of potential there–canneries got reefers of fruit and vegetables, sure, but they also needed tin for cans or glass for bottles, tank cars of corn syrup or other sweeteners, shipments of wooden or cardboard boxes for packing, etcetera. Even a single-industry railroad will have multiple needs–that grain elevator mostly ships out cars of grain, but what happens when they need new machinery to keep the elevator, um, elevating?
MA Bruce,
I’ve now seen a couple of photos of your layout and was wondering if you have a website or were published. I really like the rural aspects. I believe I also saw a tipple and some abandoned track as well. Would like to see some more. Very inspiring!
Dave Vergun