P1:
It’s been a while since I’ve been by that plant, but I am pretty sure they were plain vanilla modern tank cars, no fancy graphics, reporting marks probably UTLX or GATX or something, and with small markings for “POLYOL” or “DIISOCYANATE”. For some reason, I seem to remember them being white or maybe gray or beige, not black, but I could be hallucinating.
So, how do they work. any n scale kits for a kitbash or something? Pictures? I’d replace the lumber with this, so that’s the space it would have. Thanks, Autobus, I’ll see what fits that description from Atlas.
Hmm, my era.
Explosives would be An-Fo (ammonium nitrate = Fertililizer and fuel oil) shipped in covered hoppers and tank cars.
Equipment for the mining industry could be shipped in on flatcars.
In that time, Volkswagen had a assembly plant in New Stanton.
Johnstown had a railcar manufacturing plant (Bethelehem, then Freightcar America) steel in finished cars out.
J&J builds truck bodies, dump, utility and such. Aluminium in, finished bodies out.
There’s always an Army depot (Letterkenny in Franklin county, Tobyhanna near Scranton, and an ammo plant in Scranton)
Grove manufacturing makes large cranes in it’s Shady Grove plant, that was served by the Western Maryland.
Frick makes cooling equipment in Waynesboro. See above for rail service.
Concrete plants all over the state.
Harley Davidson makes motorcycles in York. The had an EMD Model 40 as the plant switcher.
For that matter, Piper made the famous Piper Cub airplane in Lock Haven, lumber and structural in, “assembled” (meaning wings off) out.
Hope this helps
Logging may have died out, but inbound lumber is going strong. There are dozens of lumber companies in the Reading’s 1950’s list and I see lumber headed for PA in today’s trains. All those 2x4’s in all the buildings made in the last half a century had to come from someplace.
Dave H.
chocolate is a decent one… Hershey’s has a significant setup and Whitman’s chocolate also ships some by rail but no where near as much as Hershey’s.
A lime plant is actually quite huge. A decently sized one used to be in full operation outside Bellefonte PA in the 1950s-1970s window before the steel industry collapsed and it ended rail service (although there are still plants that do, just not The Gyp as the locals called it). Limestone was mined on-site, then traveled around 300 feet by conveyor. From there it could travel another 300 yardsfeet to a small rotary dryer, then a crusher, where they filled bags of limestone for whatever purpose people needed bags of limestone or filled hoppers for larger customers. For example, it was the local source of ballast. The crusher was a large cubical building that would be easy to duplicate even though a lot of source pictures. Next to that was a large concrete silo for storing crushed stone.
The other option after the first conveyor ended was to go fifty more feet to get sorted into one of three huge hoppers (imagine a big flood loader like a coal mine would have). Those hoppers fed into three enormous, and I mean enormous, rotary kilns to burn the limestone. Each of them were only 425 feet long. At one end of the kilns were large structures where coal was pulverized and incinerated to fire the kilns. These buildings were roughly 50x100 feet. After that, the kilns fed into eight big concrete silos. There was also a building to store bagged lime, which was around 75x100 feet. A building for hydrating and bagging the lime was roughly the same size and sat nearby on the same siding. There was also a large structure roughly the same size that filled covered hoppers with lime.
Obviously most of the facility doesn’t need to be modeled, but they’re quite la
Be sure to have billboards for the Eagles and Steelers. (Sorry, couldn’t pass that up.)
a fun and unique industry would be an ammonium nitrate explosives plant. they were not uncommon in coal-mining country where explosives were used in the mines. i believe that they took shipments in covered hoppers.
Steelers? They don’t need to advertise like that. Pitt Panthers college football, though, does. They don’t hit full capacity very often.
Thanks all. I’m in greenville for a week, but I’ll scrutinize this thread and pick out the common industries and re-draw the track plan. Please, keep suggesting ideas.
Go to Keystone Croosings website and download the CT100 booklet that lists every industry from milepost 0 in New York to whatever it is in Chicago including all branch lines. The mile and a half I am modeling in Philadelphia has four branch lines that had everything from a steel mill to the Sears east cost distribution center to the US Navy supply depot. There are 87 industries along the main line alone with shingle company, supermarket distribution center, lace company several freight houses with it all listed by milepost so you know exactly where it is. By the way, “Go Bears!”
I live a stone’s throw from the chocolate factory and covered hoppers and tank cars go in an out constantly. Huge inter-modal operations here also… just my [2c]
Matt
So, going from the upper track from stagin g and going around to the branching one::
fuel oil dealer stays
town 1 (top part):
a lumber co., explosives depot, and foam plant.
power plant on the next segment.
town 2 (bottom half[replaces coal mine]):
snack food plant, newspaper, feed dealer, glass factory
replace lumber mill on the last part w/ a lime quarry and a water bottling plant (mountain stream behind, hoppers of plastic pellets in, boxcars of bottled water out)
So, I’ll have the new plan up this saturday or so. Thanks all.