If you are like me and like industries and trains, you like industries that you can fit on your layout without removing most of the industry yet has a large quantity of cars. Below are some industries with good potential to model.
Carmeuse Lime & Stone (formerly Oglebay Norton) Industrial Sands - Shafter, CA
Satellite View, Street View, Web Page
CTS Cement Transload Terminal - Santa Fe Springs, CA
Bird’s Eye View, Satellite View,
i agree 100%. i chose to have several large capacity industries rather than a bunch of small ones. two of my favorites are Milo-Meal (breakfast of losers) a large grain and cereal mill and Apocalypse Chemical (located next to the mutant animal petting zoo)
even that does not satify my desire to switch out, deliver and receive long cuts of cars (25 or more) so being blessed with a lot of room, i have 3 foreign line interchange yards. each of them holds about 60 cars.
that gives me an excuse for some foreign locomotives and cabooses.
inbound trains require a lot of classification if they are not pre-blocked.
i play mind games with phantom industries represented by some remote staging tracks where transfer moves originate and terminate.
what was your inspiration for the prototype, industries and operating plan you chose? i think a lot of us tend to be influenced by our first awareness of railroad operation or perhaps work experinces that occured early in our lives.
grizlump
I like your names for your industries. Plausible, but still just that little bit edgy.
I’ve never worked in a rail-served industry. But, I did have a couple of summer jobs at a brokerage firm in New York City, which meant riding commuter rail and subways every day. So, the subways were a key element of my layout.
I like industries that allow me to use a variety of cars. So, I’ve got a packing plant that needs stock cars and reefers, and a coal-and-oil dealership that takes hoppers and tanks. A brewery also needs reefers, and these ice-bunker cars need an icing platform. Pretty much any box car can stop at a freight house, too.
Don’t forget the team track! Just about any car could be switched into one. Add a ramp / dock and now you can unload flat, box, and reefer cars; add a conveyor and now you can unload hopper cars. Add a few hoses lying on the ground and now you can trans-load tank cars into trucks. A team track could be high volume requiring daily switching, especially if used for reefers. On my layout, one of the team tracks is used to unload refrigerator cars directly to trucks. Cars are dropped in the a.m. and then pulled in the evening. One of the best things about a team track is it does not need a lot of space ( track and access road) and it can be used for a variety of car types! Chuck
I perfer larger industries with several spots although I have smaller industries as well.
barrok wrote:Don’t forget the team track!
Team track?
That doesn’t bode well for modern modelers.The word is :distribution or transload track.[swg]
Each spot can receive/load different products. Besides the possibility of different car types, specific cars of the same general type can be carrying/receiving different loads with particular spots for the different products. Thus, a larger, multi-product industry is more like a bunch of individual industries as far as the switching requirements are concerned. This makes things much more interesting than industries with one product.
Mark
One of the industries on my Santa Fe in Oklahoma, era 1989, is the GM auto plant. I did most of the structures along the walls, with tracks going inside for auto parts cars, etc., box and coil steel, outside the loading racks, plus fuel tracks. Makes a nice industry to receive many cars, but a minimum of space.
Also I have several of the large grain elevator complexes modeled at Enid and smaller towns. Enid has Union Equity (Farmland) A and Be, and Y and Z. Each of these have three tracks to load out and receive inbound. Plus the Pillsbury Mills, General Mills, Mid America elevator. Granted they are large structures, but again located against walls, etc.
Bob
Also, it allows you to model a privately-owned switch engine for just that industry, if you’d like.
I have a cement plant I can get to use boxcars, and hoppers. Normally if I will add a plant, shipping, etc…I will make sure I can use a couple of different cars. I think I will get more enjoyment out of it.
On another note:
A plant right below me does “rock salt” for winter, and they only have about three sidings. Right now with it being winter, they have hoppers everywhere. The room for them??? Nope. A small yard below the plant is full of hoppers. Way more than normal. I guess used for the extra hoppers.
I guess you could always add a small yard just for a plant, but that will take up more layout room.
Here is a quick shot of the lower yard. Not the best shot, but hey its was taken in a moving car on the bridge.
I purposely left out the team track. The post was about industries, I do not consider a team track to be an industry.
Good list. My old T/C had a couple that may be of interest. (1955)
Limestone mine/plant. Used gravity loaded covered & open hoppers for bulk, box cars / fork trucks for bagged product.
Furniture factory. Used flats for lumber in, tanks / adhesives/varnish, etc., box cars / fabric, metal parts, etc., in - finished goods out. Usually had a gondola under a chute for waste.
RR / truck cross dock. Long narrow dock, 4-5 box cars on one side, trucks on the other. Freight moved back and forth. (RR owned)
(#1 & 2 also had facility for using trucks, as well)
Do US cement works still send out bagged cement (in boxcars) by rail? Just wondering because a plant I worked at shipped about 95% bulk by tanker but the rest bagged on pallets. It could add another variation. Maybe all door box cars?
Something I’ve never seen modelled is either a plaster-board factory or a corrugated cement/asbestos cladding/roof sheet factory???
I don’t think that much of the factory needs to be modelled. What I am aiming to do is to run the tail track for an off-scene large industry out from a scenic break and along between the backs of smaller industries and the main tracks. Hopefully this will give me the best of all worlds. It also gives somewhere for the big plant’s own internal locos to shuffle about.
Thanks for starting the interesting thread. [^] I like the links. [^]
Dave,Yes,bagged cement can be ship in boxcars.
Here is a handy list.
Even loose cement was shipped in box cars before suitable covered hoppers became generally available.
Mark
Mark,One of my favorite waybills was for a N Scale SP&S 40’ boxcar…It was loaded with bagged cement for Imperial Cement Products Bristol,Va on my old CD&B…I have the same waybill today but,its for a BN boxcar headed for Reliance Universal Concrete Products Jackson,Oh on my C&HV…I used real names gleamed from phone books but,relocated the industries to towns on my former CD&B and now my CH&V’s Jackson Line.
Boxcars haul a lot of things.Even today loads for boxcars can be anything from pet food to gaylords of scrap paper…I suppose that’s why I like boxcars.
ok so ive searched for Golden Grain Ethanol plant in Mason City Iowa but can not find any views…what am i doing wrong?
The most recent Track Planning has an article on corn syrup switching. Never knew how much of that stuff there was.
Something I think is interesting is how we are influenced by what we grew up with and see. I grew up in an area with one large dominant industry and many small businesses. Even the town I’m in had many small rail served businesses, some as recently as a couple years ago. One was a dead ringer for Walters propane. Another, a commercial food service, was a classic “freight car is almost bigger than the building”. What also surprised me was how many covered hoppers a very small elevator can consume. Those can be very small and still generate a lot of traffic. There are two small elevators and a feed mill here that help justify a locomotive stationed in town.
When I searched for Golden Grain Ethanol, I did not find much relevant. It looks like that is because its name is actually Golden Grain Energy.
http://www.goldengrainenergy.com/plant_photo.htm
I am in the process of relocating to Williamsburg Michigan just east of Traverse City. This is fruit country (in northern Michigan of all places). 22 wineries within 30 miles, cherry, apple and peach trees as far as the eye can see, National cherry festival around the Fourth of July and a really neat little rail loading building in Williamsburg. Originally rails served the numerous packing plants directly but now this little forty by twenty foot building does the job. There are two truck docks on the west side, two rail loading doors on the north and one on the south side. Apparently fruit is brought by truck, unloaded by forklift directly to rail cars. The building is modern corrugated steel siding and perfect for a small space. The siding looks like it can handle ten to twelve cars at a time but right now everything is covered in snow. As soon as the snow thins out (57" at this point) I’ll get some pictures.
A link to a turkey feed manufacturer in Dubois Indiana. Receives a 10 to 12 car train of soybean meal every few days. This satellite photo is when it was relatively new. Its only about 5 years old and looks like an ADM grain elevator kit could model it very well. An Alco S2 brings the cars in from the NS interchange about 16 miles away. Zoom in close and scroll due north from the center of town.