My latest layout plan is for a medium sized switching layout - approx 35 linear feet in a G shape. My first thought was to mimick Lance Mindheim’s CSX Miami’s Downtown spur plan, and it fits fine in my space - but someone rightly suggested that I try something different.
The gist is a modern (post-80’s) switching district, switching power being aged 2nd gen EMDs.
One of the options I’m considering is a Kansas City Southern layout, and one of the more interesting areas seems to be Louisiana, be it Shreveport, Baton Rouge or New Orleans. I’ve been scouting the former’s abandoned rail spurs and have come up with these so far (bearing in mind that the physical plants may well have been reappropriated since rail service stopped):
Scrap Metal: short spur
Warehouse: Shreveport warehouse services
Warehouse: Records centre
Warehouse: Xpedix delivery
Plastics: short spur
Asphalt plant: Certainteed
While this is a start, it’s not exactly inspiring, so I’d like to see what you guys think I could plausibly include!
If you have a rural-looking segment of the layout, you might get some good ideas from reading about the Louisiana & Delta (a spin-off from SP). There’s a lot of local switching on that line.
Good articles about the L&D appeared in Trains magazine, July 2001, p. 56 and in Railfan & Railroad, July 2003, p. 36.
Louisiana carload rail service is dominated by the forest products and petrochemical industries outbound, and aggregates and animal feed inbound. Shreveport actually doesn’t have a great deal of rail-served industry of the sort that composes a “switching district.” Most of the customers are large to very large, spread out, and isolated from each other. However, if you mix and match, from all over the KCS system, you could conceivably jam together examples of some of the smaller industries in an industrial district and call it “Shreveport” or “Baton Rouge” or “Beaumont.” New Orleans isn’t much on the KCS. Some of these industries include, from various parts of the KCS system:
Plastic pellets and lumber inbound transload to truck (covered hopper, centerbeam, boxcar in)
Tie, timber, and pole creosoting (gons, bulkhead flats, plain flats, centerbeams in and out; tankcars in)
Aggregates inbound transload to truck (gons in, both long, low-side and short, high-side)
Plastic pipe manufacturing (covered hoppers in, bulkhead and plain flats out)
Paper recoating and repackaging (boxcars in, boxcars and domestic containers out)
Ductile iron pipe manufacturing (tankcars, gons in, bulkhead flats, gons, and plain flats out)
Chemical reprocessing (tankcars in and out)
Drilling mud and frac sand distribution (covered hoppers, PD covered hoppers, in)
Lumber pressure treating (non-creosote) (bulkhead flats, plain flats, centerbeams in and out, plus tankcars in)
Specialty clay and building materials products (covered hoppers in or out, boxcars in or out)
Scrap metal processing (gons out and sometimes gons in, too)
Food distribution (covered hoppers, boxcars in)
Flour and baking products distribution (covered hoppers, PD covered hoppers, boxcars in)
Chemicals distribution (tankcars in)
Animal feed and fertilizer distribution (covered hoppers, tankcars in)</