Hows it going all. Been a while since I started a topic here, I’m building an N scale layout from a MR plan, but it leaves industry options to you, I’ve decided one of the sidings will service a small grain elevator and the other one on the plan will be some sort of small industry generating a few cars a day. I’m looking for photos or ideas of lineside industries you folks have modelled, but Scrapyards are attracting alot of my interest. Been on the other side of the world it’s a bit hard to get references apart from google, and that isn’t giving me much. If any of you folks have photos of scrapyards or other small industries you’ve modelled or some prototype photos, that would be greatly appreciated if you could share them. alternatively if you could point me to some sites that would help that would be great. I would like to see some photos for references and to get a better idea of how they should look. Any help would be great! James
James
Heres a link to my photobucket album showing pix of a huge metal recycler in Detroit, MI, that I toured with the RRISIG in 2003:
http://s39.photobucket.com/albums/e182/CSX_road_slug/Scrap_Metal_Yard/
James,
Ken L. gave you some pretty good photos. Scrapyards are ideal industries because they are so common and can be built to a relatively small size. One of your best sources for photos will be Bing Maps ‘birdseye’ view. If you zoom in on any major US city it won’t take long to find a scrap yard or two. There is a large one in Washington, D.C. inside the beltway on the east side of town. In Orlando, FL there is one off of Orange Ave. In Miami, there are two on the north bank of the Miami River towards the end of the river. Seattle has a number of them in the industrial park just north of the airport.
Although there are many large yards, small ones that just take three or four cars are also common. Typically you have loads of scrap coming in from a variety of private and commercial guys in pick ups and small dump trucks. They dump the metal on the ground and then it is sorted. After sorting it’s loaded into a gondola. The most common gons are 50 foot low sides and old high side utility gondola’s (Athearn makes models of both).
The scrap yard in Ken’s photos are pretty typical althout often the machines are smaller than the one’s in his photos - smaller backhoes and grappling hooks.
Lance Mindheim
Visit the Downtown Spur at www.lancemindheim.com
Maybe you could make the other one a railroad car-building shop, and improve your rolling stock situation at the same time???
Just a thought…
[:-^]
John
Jim, with regard to modeling a scrapyard, unless it is a very large indeed, it is unlikely to generate much in the way of rail traffic. Something of the size often seen modeled on a home layout probably wouldn’t handle in excess of a gon, or two, a week of scrap. Of course, you could always cheat by modeling just a small corner of the establishment, containing the spur and crane, at the extreme edge of the layout and tell vistors that the portion unseen is a major regional facility. [;)]
CNJ831
Here’s a Bing Bird’s Eye of a scrap yard in Pontiac MI, served by CN. You can see that it’s a pretty large operation with its own trackmobile to move the gons around the yard to various piles. The “interchange” with CN could be the only thing modeled, as CNJ831 suggests, with the main part of the yard being implied as “in the aisle”.
Not sure what era your going for, but modern era often the cranes will be mobile, as in this bing view of Port Newark. Does Norscott or Motorart offer models in N scale?
Here’s a much smaller scrap metal industry in Miami
http://www.bing.com/maps/explore/?org=aj#/og894y2g0yp5h14z
This is Miami Iron and Metal -same basic arrangement as the other facilities that were posted just on a smaller scale. Every time I’ve been railfanning down there the local has a few loads from Miami Iron and Metal. The trains I’ve seen typically have two outbound loads in high side utility gons.
Lance Mindheim
I’ve got one of those annoying 45-degree rooflines, and the new section of my layout goes right under it. I decided to disguise the line with a bunch of small scenes, structures and greenery. This is an auto junkyard, about 6 inches long in HO. It’s not meant to be “rail served,” simply scenery. The fence is made from coffee stirrer sticks. The cars are old plastic toys. I drilled out the plastic windows and heavily rusted and weathered them, and then added more junk around them.
Here is a pic of a HO scale scrap yard that might work for you. http://www.aloharail.org/ and then click Layout and it is the 3rd photo.
I used a small corner of a shelf section on my layout to build a corner of a scrap yard.
The green “wall” in the foreground is the edge of the layout, but it could suggest a yard that extends well into the aisle. It’s N scale, and the area occupied is about 5" x 12".
Lee
Thanks everyone for the replies.
Ken, Thanks for the link, very helpful, cheers!
CNJ - Thanks for the comments about ideas, I appreciate your comments - food for thought.
ODave : Thanks for that link, gives me a good idea on how to layout a scrapyard. The space would be about 12 inches long by about 6 inches… perhaps a bit bigger. I think in N scale I could model something fairly significant.
Chutton01: The era I’m modelling will be the modern era, when I say modern anywhere from about 1996 to now, not sure about models by norscott or motorart, I will look into that.
Gday Hossier Line (Lance): Thanks for your comments and that link of a scrapyard in your area. A great help to me! Can I also say I’m a great fan of your layouts and modelling.