OK. dont know if this has been done so please dont flame me but I think a list of different industries that are served by rail could be a great thing to assist in planning a layout. Now I hope that this list will include all sorts of things. Huge plants all the way down to the old rickety siding that mom &pop even need the occasonial rail car for.
Now lets try to include a good mix of even the easiest things to list also. If we can each do 2… one easy and one not so easy it may be fun…
One that’s easy and the most over looked and can give you the most bang for your buck, is the good old team track. Just about any kind of car type can be spotted here for loading and unloading. Coal, add a over head crane for flats and gons. Classic metals now makes a great side door semi trailer so you can pull up along side a boxcar or a reefer.
One thing to concider is that the time period modeled can effect which industries are served by rail. After WW2 many industries began turning more and more towards trucks to move cargo and passengers bought cars so the passenger rail traffic all but disappeared.
With that in mind, one of my favorites, regardless of time period, is the docks. Ships bring cargo to be moved via rails to wherever and trains bring things for ships to take to far off ports. All kinds of products are moved so there’s no end to the types of traffic that you see there.
A while back we had quite an entertaining and enlightening discussion of how railroads might serve a brewery, and how it might be modelled. Since a single facility might brew a number of different beers, or the same beer under several different labels, it gives the early-era modeller the opportunity to use all those colorful “billboard” beer reefers. Additionally, other components like bottles, water, hops, barley or even fuel might be delivered to the brewery by rail.
One of the easiest industries to model, besides a team track, is a RIP (Repair In Place) track. Throw down a rail or two near your loco facilities and any kind of car needing minor repairs can be seen there. Car is spotted, repaired, and returned to service. You can even repair cars that you don’t have an industry on the layout to service.
No one has mentioned the all important interchange track. Although not an industry ,any and all types of rolling stock can appear on this track, which gives someone the excuse to buy that new Articulated Autorack that he would otherwise have no use for.
As I was reading the question I already had my first choice in mind and then saw that Fargo beat me to it. OK, team track’s taken, how about a lumber reload track. Out here in the PacNW timber country it’s fairly common for a mill located off line to truck lumber and a fork lift to a sidng and load their cars there. When I was working for the BN there was a siding w/ a switch at both ends and room for maybe 5 or 6 cars in Grand Forks BC that was good for 2 or 3 cars a trip. Nothing there but the main, 2 switches, the reload track and hard packed dirt where the trucks and forklift worked.
An unusual one is a pet food factory. There’s one here that shipped up to 10 cars a day, empties in, loads out. In addition, there was the occasioal tank car of ingredients inbound.
[:)]I’m partial to a chemical plant. Besides tank cars it can have box cars. [;)] I also have a siding running behind several small business that are on main street. [2c] A bakery, a printing shop, and several other businesses can supply a variety of cars.[8D]
Aggregate plants
Aluminum plants
Box plants
Building materials companies
Cement plants
Cheese plants
Citrus processing plants
Coke calciners
Cold Storage
Creameries
Ethanol plants
Feed mills
Fertilizer distributors
Fertilizer plants
Food processing plants
Glass plants
Inorganic chemical plants
Military bases
Mineral mines and/or processing plants (Copper, soda ash, trona, and potash are some that come to mind)
Mini-Mills
NGL plants
Oil field service centers
Packing plants
Plants that make things from plastics
Printing plants
Recycling centers (large)
Scrap yards
Sewer farms
Snack food plants
Steel service centers
Tomato processing plants
Wineries
We had a Purina Mill for many years in Tampa. It was right next to the former ACL mainline. I used to ride by it on my bicycle as a teen. Saddened me when it was relocated out of town in the late 80s. One could easily smell the wheat or grains used to produce the pet food.
Typically a Seaboard Coast Line U18B or EMD SW would switch and spot one to three 54 ft. Centerflow hoppers underneath the large, silo shaped structure behind the building.
This is definetly a structure I’m going to model and fortunately there’s an HO Purina Mill kit on the market.
This is a small-scale loader. It’s a very old (1960’s) Vollmer kit. The chute doors are solenoid-activated, and once I get it connected up again it will load coal into the hoppers below:
And at the other end of the line, this pit will collect the coal. I’m using old Mantua hoppers with operating doors. The heap of coal below the track is fixed, but it’s got a “volcano” core which leads to a below-table box to catch the coal.
