I’ve been kicking around the idea of changing out some of the businesses on my layout lately, but finally arrived at the conclusion that I’d probably be better off leaving everything just as it is. I seem to go through this at least once a year. I’ve also been considered adding a new business or two, but there’s just really not enough room for anything else. The community I have consists of a most of the staples of a small community including a railroad station, a hotel, a gas station, a general store, a bank, a dry goods store, an all night diner, a fire station, a school, a lumber mill and a couple of houses - as well as various other railroad structures like a switching tower, water tank, coaling tower and track side shacks.
I’m working against some severe space constraints, so most of my “community” areas will be located in the aisleways, or down the road that curves around a hill and disappears. I do hope to have a typical small town main street on the peninsula I haven’t built yet.
If you have storefront businesses, you can always post new or special signage. Change the name, but not the business type. Put big, “Going out of business,” “Prices slashed,” “Everything MUST Go,” or, “Under New Management,” signs in the main show window(s). Do some chalk-dust weathering of smoke damage, break a window or two and have a, “Fire Sale!”
IIRC, E. L. Moore built a three-storefront business block, then put, “Going out of business,” signage and banners on the two end stores - and a, “Main Entrance,” sign over the door of the store in the middle.
If you are talking about what is serviced by the railraod it’s a silvber mine, a brewery, an LCL, and a cattle ramp. IF you are talking about a town, there’s everything from a general store to a house of illrepute.
In the center I have a classification yard with room for about 30-40 box cars on spurs, to the left of that I have the Diesel Engine servicing area which also leads over to the turntable and Engine House.
On one siding I have a small feed store modelled after a local feed store that is on the CSX Mainline here in town.
The whole thing feeds a dual mainline that runs the perimeter of the 4x8 sheet of homasote.
This gives me the chance to run at speed as well as do switching movements, both of which I enjoy.
Well, my old layout only had one main town, the one I’m planning out now will have two. One, Ore Bay, is pretty much the railroad, yards, and ore dock on Lake Superior, probably won’t have room for much more than that (except maybe a few flats or backdrop buildings). Lake Hammond will have the “regular” businesses from the old layout, at least as many as I can fit in: A coal dealer, lumber yard and oil company will be served by the railroad, along with a depot and water tower. Non-RR buildings would include a post office, general store, gas station, union hall (well, that’s what the kit was called, it could become something else) and a small trailer court.
BTW - you could put some of your buildings on a base, then make bases the same size and put new buildings on them, so you could change buildings from time to time to vary things a little.
The rail-served industries are a coal-and-oil company and a Swift packing plant. Main Street (actually, Penny Lane) has the House of Haggis restaurant, Baldy’s Barbershop, Annie’s Antiques, Suzanne’s House of Beef and Madame Adrienne’s fortune telling parlor. I’ve named a number of local businesses after my daughter and her friends.
Upstairs in these DPM buildings, I’ve put decals on the windows which suggest non-specific office-type businesses. Dewey, Cheatham and Howe, R. Crumb Trucking, Dave Kelly, Attorney at Law, Katie’s School of Dance and Max’s School of Rock are all up there on the second floor of my buildings.
(Click on the picture to blow it up a bit, in case your eyes are as bad as mine.)
Well, my layout has a big Grain and cement industry along with a printing plant. So I deal a lot in Grain hoppers, cement cars, and a whole bunch of 40 and 50 foot boxcars.
On my new track plan the main customers are Prestage Tool & Gear (machine shops, wharehouse, powerhouse & office building), a local feed mill, grain elevator, a fuel-oil-gas dealer, a rr station & frieghthouse. Non RR businesses: a gas station retail stores, car dealer & tractor supply & repair. (click on plan & photos to enlarge)
This building will be one of the machine shops.
The one story brick building on the left will be a 2nd machine shop and the 2 story building will be offices on the 2nd floor and shipping on the first.
This building will be made into a wharehouse with a track going into it via the big door.
On my old layout I had a team track dock next to the PT&G siding.
PT&G Wharehouse dock, fuel tanks, & powerhouse on old layout.
My new layout, (layout #4) , a bridge-line that takes place in Eastern Missouri, will connect the CB&
The shades are on the inside. DPM kits come with a sheet of thin plastic for the window glazing, which is protected by a couple of sheets of thin paper. Being a Scotsman, I used that same paper. I cut it to varying sizes and glued it inside the building. Ordinary tissue paper or toilet paper will work, too.
I made the decals myself with decal paper and my ordinary ink-jet printer. I put the decals on the outside of the windows. I lay out the decals in MS Word. Usually, I print a piece of paper first and cut the prints to size to make sure the decals will fit. I print a strip at a time across the top of the paper, and then cut the whole row off with a paper cutter. That way, I can keep using the same sheet of decal paper, even though it gets shorter each time.
This one is a bit more elaborate. (Adrienne, my daughter’s friend, is very theatrical.) The interior curtains are from a Model Power kit, but I scanned the originals and re-sized them on the computer, before printing on regular paper. The Hanging Eye sign was just a downloaded graphic, printed on cardstock. The decals were done as above.
The Cedar Branch & Western goes from the Hawksbill Station yard, where the railroad interchanges with the MP, through the mountains to the town of Cedar Branch. The railroad serves several industries and small towns on the way. At the end of the line is the Weyerhauser plant, the CB&W’s biggest customer.
At this time, Cedar Branch and the Weyerhauser plant are in the mock up stage. Here are two options I’ve laid out so far:
I rather like the idea of ‘plug-in’ businesses for the non-customers. If you have the storage capacity, you can make up two whole towns’ worth of mom-and-pop shops. Work the town on the layout, run a train on the infinite loop while you change out some buildings, then pull in to ‘the next town’.
I picked my businesses after I found an old promotional book by the City of Fort Wayne from 1907. I listed everybody in the book, then looked over the cars I owned. Mostly reefers. Matching up things that sounded interesting and somewhat related (because I have a switching layout and want some cars to stay on-scene a while before departing town), I wound up with a wholesale butcher’s shop, an ice cream plant, a brewery, and a wholesale grocer’s warehouse. And an interchange track and a team track, using the names of many small businesses for my waybills.
Since then I have bought more boxcars and a few hoppers. I have not actually built any buildings or made any scenery, so changing industries for me is as easy as writing on a Post-It. I currently plan to put up buildings simulating a piano factory, a monument carver (as in tombstones), the grocer’s warehouse, the butcher, an LCL / team track / freighthouse, a coal distributor, and a soap factory. This may be a bit too much for my space.
The Old Dog would argue that one must specifiy what era, what region, and what size town to answer this type of question.
For example, back when the Old Dog was a very young pup (late 1940’s) , it lived next to a blacksmith shop. That was a rare neighbor even in those days. But it would have been a common small town/ village business in th early 1900’s.
Consider the local tavern/barroom/bar and grill, a common small town business. In the 1920’s, it would be inappropriate due to prohibition. It would also be inappropriate iof one is modeling a town in a “dry” county say in East Texas. In other areas the establishment might have a few hotel rooms upstairs so it could qualify as a hotel and be open on Sunday.
As a rule, businesses in small towns tend to be less specialized then in larger cities. For example, one might see a small grocery store combined with a gas station and garage plus a restaurant. In some states that might be combined with a liquor store and/or package (beer) store depending on the state liquor laws. In additi
SpaceMouse – that’s one business that I wanted to mention and did’nt . House of Ill Repute . Like the military bases almost every large yard had one very near by . My grandfather and uncles took me on the tour of Cumberland’s when I was a teen and had to show me the 2 there … with a chuckle . They called them " CAT HOUSES " …LOL . My grandad said " Oh son it gets awful lonely in those cabbooses " laughing and making me promise not to tell grandma ! One will surely be on my new layout . I only go for true realism ya know … ROFL — [:-^]
