okay, so i’m planning a Pennsylvania line. And before ya’ll say “coal mine”, I have planned one. What I need is some ideas for the other industries.
Lumber Co.?
Pennsylvania is a big state with varied geography. Which part exactly are you trying to model? One common industry in PA is (was) steel, however it would eat your layout space.
Mountain coal country, Chad. GG, that’s a good idea, and walthers has a kit for a lumber co.
A few months ago I was in the mountains in Virginia, also coal country. It didn’t seem like there was much industry there besides coal, infact the only trains I saw were loaded coal trains, empty coal trains, and the occasional group of helpers deadheading downhill. Coal train operation wasn’t as simple as you might think. Coal went from mines to processing plants where it was washed crushed and screened. It was then sent to its destination.
The few other industries I saw that would be heavy enough for rail service were rock quarries, and an aluminum rim plant making wheels for cars.
Here’s what I got so far:
Kinda self-explanatory. These industries + their spurs are subject to change.
EDIT: Swap GG’s lumber and Chad’s rock quarry. Same spurs, but they swap places.
EDIT 2: Fresh plan.
Virtually any industry except growing citrus can be in Pennsylvania.
Pick a part of Pennsylvania.
Dave H.
How about demolition crews, tearing down the Bethlehem plant, making way for a casino…
Long time ago when the earth was brand new I lived in Jeannette, PA. In that post WWII period the PRR had four fairly active tracks and numerous sidings serving its industries, I will expand on these>
The PRR served Glass Factories (as hand blown glass was still a specialty in Jeannette and neighboring Grapeville, Pa). I mention Grapeville for two anecdotal reasons, In its vicinity there where deposits of natural gas for the glass furnaces and also milk glass was a specialty item of Grapeville (now a coveted collectable made famous by the likes of Martha Stewart). As a boy I would return home from school and check out the piles of colourful broken glass out behind the glass factories. There would be an interesting modeling challenge – a pile of broken glass rejects from the factory floor behind a glass furnace and factory.
Also this town, 35 miles west of Pittsburgh had a factory manufacturing rubber products such as tires, tennis balls, basketballs. It was the Pennsylvania Rubber co. eventually bought out by a Japanese firm I think.
There was a small foundary in the vicinity–no job too small was their motto --as our family had a BarBque grill cast there a a very low cost.
The town had the Elliott Factory manufacturing a line of fairly high tech turbines. Its factory had a semi-dedicated siding and I think the Elliott company still manufactures turbines used to run high compression pumps for the natural gas transmission industry. Another aside, when I was a boy I would listen to the trains run through Jeannette, from my bedroom window I could see the once per night passenger train. The only noise that would compete with the PRR would be the Elliott factory testing their newly manufactured turbines by reving them up until they whined and shreeked. The factory was a source of oversized and heavy car loads of turbines draped in canvas for outshipment on the PRR.
So there, one small town with 3 i
I think a coal processing plant would be a better industry for generating traffic than a rock quarry. It would be a large building (think New River Mine Kit but twice as big) with conveyors leading to unloading grates or rotary dumpers. It would have its own small yard to hold trains of coal. The best part is it lets you send coal somewhere else besides staging and it can also receive coal from staging. Mine run coal in from on layout mines or staging, various grades of coal out to on layout consumers or staging.
One more question, what era are you thinking of?
2880:
You evil man! Michael Bay is just now using the Bethlehem, PA steel mill to represent a Chinese steel mill in his next Transformers movie. Which for some reason makes me sad. Probably because I have a Bethlehem steel manual I use all the time. Also because Bethlehem would be RAKING IN THE CASH right now if they had only managed to hang on for a couple more years. Steel, everybody wants it.
P1: You want industries? We got 'em. Here’s a very incomplete local list, which you might use if modeling a small city:
-Locomotive plant (REALLY COOL! Even if it’s those nasty diseasels)
-Coke plant that sells to foundries (years ago they had a blast furnace and sold pig iron)
-A number of foundries - Iron, bronze, aluminum
-Lots and lots of plastic shops - packaging, electric connectors, all kinds of goods. One makes unholy quantities of coffee-can lids. Lots of these shops get plastic by rail. One, which looks quite small, gets numerous carloads because their product is pipe and they produce a lot and ship it often.
-A number of die-casting shops - aluminum, zinc alloy, pot metals
-Lots and lots and lots of machine shops and fabrication shops
-Rubber molding factories
-Electronics plant
-Wire goods plant. They make those odd rods in your barbeque grill kits, Big Wheels, etc.
-Snack food factories. One plant makes doughnuts, another makes Little Debbie-type stuff.
-A very large commercial dairy
-Open die and closed die steel forgings. Big open-die shops make cool models, because you can ship single forgings on flatcars. Use blocks of wood filed and sanded to just about any rough shape, painted grimy black and weathered. A square chunk with a round chunk at each end would be pretty plausible.
-Hand tool manufacturers
-Newspaper - receives carloads of paper
A few selected stations from the 1954 Reading Shippers guide: (TT means they used a team track)
Gordon PA (also had a yard and an engine/helper terminal, heart of the coal region)
4 coal mines
Morgan, Arthur, feeds, TT
Seitzinger, JA, automobiles TT
Stehr, Henry, Feed TT
Stitzer and Keller Lumber, lumber TT
Pottsville, PA (huge coal marshalling yard, engine terminal, southern edge of the coal region)
Coal breaker
Aetna Steel products, doors
Atlantic Refining, gasoline and oil
buechley Lumber, lumber
Dohn Provision Co., meat
Capitol Bakers, bakery
Evans warehouse, warehouse
L Hummel’ & Sons, furniture
Kreig Supply Co, lumber and millwork
Mt. Carbon Brewery, Beer, TT
Phillips-Jones Corp, shirts
Pottsville Box, co, paper boxes
Pottsville Building Block co., concrete blocks
Pottsville Ice co., fuel oil TT
Pottsville Steam heat Co., central steam heat
Swift and Co., meat
H. Weiner & Co, scrap metal
DG Yuenling & Sons, beer TT (good beer by the way)
St. Nicholas, PA (in the middle of the coal region):
Coal breaker
H. Weiner & Co, scrap metal
Reading Briquette, coal briquettes
Sunbury PA(north and west edge of the coal region):
4 Feed companies
3 bakeries or flour mills
5 lumber yards & building materials dealers
2 scrap dealers
1 waste paper dealer
2 grocery and dairy distributor
1 newspaper publisher
1 hat maker
The highway dept and Bell Telephone
1 oil and gasoline dealer
Dave H.
I don’t know about your era, but today, plastics are a big industry in PA. All you would need are covered hoppers carrying plastic pellets going in, and usually tractor trailers going out. Another industry would be any sort of aggregates or scrap industry. Speaking of aggregates, the Lehigh Valley has several cement operations that are served by rail. Finally, the Delaware Lackawanna still serves a munitions plant in Scranton, PA. It is a very large brick building with a fenced in loading area with usually three box cars. HTH
1977 or 1981, I’ not sure. What I’m thinking is that I’ll replace the rock quarry with a foam plant, or whatever that is (BTW, what kind of tankcars do I need for that?). I’ll keep my coal mine how it is, and add one siding for explosives.
western or eastern pennsylvania, North or south? Some railroads, like Conrail, and NS after conrail hauled alot of coal on the South Fork Secondary, but if you more diversity, try modeling around Harrisburg, or Reading. The Reading Northern Railroad, hauls coal and has mixed, as well as some tourist operations. Steel Mills in Johnstown, Pittsburgh, and etc were very important to the ecomony of a town, Like in Johnstown, once the mills left, the town ran low on jobs. Coal would be a huge part of a western Pennsylvania operation like Between Altoona and Pittsburgh. But depending on where you are modeling, and what railroad you should pick a prototype, or a Railroad frist or is This Freelanced?! If you have a more rural setting a heating oil dealer would be good, served by tank car, and product shipped to homes by truck.
Tjsingle
Okay, to sum up what i’ve posted, this is a freelanced RR (Pennsylvania Southern RR) set in the foothill mountains of Pennsylvania. Era: 1977. I might add a small spur for a fuel oil depot for local homes.
blue=building
green=forest
dark grey=mountain
red=track
Kinda explains the industries. There will be some mountains to separate the industries.
The Valley Forge Flag company.
Don’t forget the turnpike and the state official vehicles doing 80.(oops)
The Philly area has docks, Bachmann’s HQ, Indepandance Hall, Franklin Museum, Betsy Ross’ house, a bazillion rail lines, etc. Railroading itself was one of the largest industries as both N-S and E-W traffic has always crossed PA at some point.
I think you mean NJ & the rich xxx that “BOUGHT” the gov’s office - should have broken his head instead of his legs!![:(!]
“…and I tell all my drivers not to exceed 80 while driving me to and from the capital.” Fat Eddie, in response to a question about reports of his high speed seen after your gov got his little boo boo.
As far as I can tell, lumber and timber haven’t really moved by rail in PA since before WWII (as local traffic, not shipments from elsewhere). Lumber really started to play out around then and most of the logging down for as long as anyone I know remembers has been small operations shipped out by truck.
One of the biggest industries in that timeframe and still to this day in traffic, tonnage, and geographic distribution is lime. There are still rotary kilns everywhere.