What industries do you model and why? What are your loads in and out and the cars that are used?
This is intended to help modelers (and me) decide on what industries they may be able to use on their own layouts. (Got the idea from the Old Dog’s thread. Sorry.)
Coal - I’ve got a bunch of old Mantua clamshell-door operating hoppers, and a building that will load the coal as well. Kind of a gimmicky thing, but it’s still kind of neat to load and unload coal.
Hogs - I squeezed a small stockyard into a corner next to an old Suydam Swift packing plant. I put some hogs into the stockyard because I picked up a couple of double-decked stock cars.
Beer - I put in a brewery to give me another siding to switch. This goes with…
Ice - It’s not assembled yet, but I’ve got a Walthers icing platform for my ice-bunker reefers. This gives me a multi-stop industry that can serve both the brewery and the packing plant, plus en-route traffic.
Oil - I’ve got a small fuel-oil dealer with some tanks on a siding where I can spot tankers.
Region and era have a lot to do with appropriate industries to be served.
In my case, coastal Southern Oregon in 1900 means:
logging from forest to sawmill, sawmill to port for loading on to ships, sawmill to local users in each town
fish processing from the fishing fleet. Salmon would be primary, salmon was canned, and then shipped east for consumption, or shipped via ship’s cargo. Some salmon would be kept fresh and go out via iced reefer.
livestock, hay, grain in the valleys slightly inland. A mill would be required for processing the grain. Meat packing done either locally or livestock shipped to Chicago.
coal and wood were the dominant fuels for heating and machinery, with coal being preferred. Coal was available in the Roseburg area, so would come west.
lots of support industries. Ice storage, since ice could not be produced locally. Ice would be brought in from the Cascades. Smiths, machine shops and carpenters were needed to sharpen saw blades, dress mill stones, repair machinery, make wagons and wheels, shoe horses, repair/replace ships and ships’ rigging, fishing nets, etc. Local infrastructure was critical to a town’s success due to the relatively high cost of transportation in those days.
Because local infrastructure was critical, almost every agricultural center in 1900 would have rail service, a lumber supply (and sawmill if the timber supply was local), coal dealer, ice storage, grain mill, and associated support shops. Anything not produced locally would come in by rail from the east, or by ship into port.
This gives me the traffic patterns and reasons for my railroad(s). I will then select industries to be actually modeled from the above.
just my thoughts
Fred W
I have a coal mine (Sentinel Coal) and will eventually have a sawmill. Logging occurs up in the hills above Seneca Falls, but I haven’t included those operations. The tracks to my off-layout staging represent them, with the sawmill amazingly synergistically astride the line as it meets my main back on the layout. I also have a foundry and rolling stock manufacturing facility on a small curved spur on the interchange. I think I done good for what is plainly a roundy-round railfanning central pit layout.
-Crandell
My industries:
A drilling/mining machinery foundry, recieves coal, pig iron, steel, ships machinery and castings.
A combination feed mill and coal yard, recieves feed, coal.
A quarry, ships aggregate (crushed rock, ballast)
A shipyard, recieves lumber, steel, boilers, misc parts.
A fertilizer/nitrate plant, ships fertilizer, potassium nitrate.
A textile mill, recieves cotton, ships textiles
A boiler works, recieves steel and iron, ships boilers
A iron/steel mill, recieves ore, coal, limestone, ships iron and steel.
A cider press, ships cider and apples.
A gunpowder works, recieves nitrates, sulphur and charcoal, ships gunpowder.
A coal yard, recieves coal and lumber
Several freight houses and team tracks
Why do I have those industries? Because they were on my chosen railroad in 1900, my chosen era Based on my research, most of the industries will even have the “correct” names (FM Brown and Sons, Harlan and Hollinsworth, Dyer Quarry, Super Phosphate, Lukens Steel, E.I. Dupont, etc). I found the industries by looking at old maps, finding shippers guides, looking at history books, reading railroad magazines (those produced by the railroads themselves) and researching the companies and processes themselves.
I will have several more (another foundry or two, furniture factory/wagon works, coal yards, lumber yards, feed mills, another quarry, etc) that I haven’t firmed up the plans yet, all of which will be based on actual industries or at least typical of the area.
In addition, I will have a lead that will represent the line to a car ferry that will run to another explosives and chemical plant (Pigeon Pt., DE to Carney’s Pt., NJ, also on the prototype) and at least 3 interchanges (B&O, PRR).
Dave H.
Coal, two ways:
Forest products, mostly cedar:
Miscellaneous (foodstuffs, fresh and packaged; petroleum products; furniture; drygoods…) delivered in appropriate cars to freight houses and team tracks for local consumption. The JNR freight house at Tomikawa is a break-bulk point.
‘Used in production’ products (small-section rail, structural steel, mine cars, explosives…) delivered to the stores siding of the larger mine.
Heavy electrical equipment and cement transloaded to the Harukawa Dentetsu for the major hydroelectric project up the (probably won’t be modeled) Harukawa Gorge.
Within a few years most of this traffic will dry up, but not until the roads are improved…
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Coke Retort - Primary starting point for Coal Gas to “light” my town. Results in Coal Tar that the adjacent Chemical Plant renders into…whatever. Takes in coal and tanker cars outputs tanker and boxcars and loaded coke hoppers.
Sawmill - Logs go in lumber comes out. Gives me spine cars and loaded flat and box cars.
Icing Plant - Midpoint reicing plant. Don’t have to worry about destinations so much as cars that need to be reiced between Points A and B. Easy for me to model as I have both the Wisconsin River and the Fox River to pull ice from
Dairy - Express and Dairy reefers in Reefers out
Brewery - Hoppers et al in Reefers and Box Cars out
Canning Plant - Open top hoppers, box cars in box cars out, coal cars in empties out
Glass Plant - this is a maybe, not sure yet if I want to do this one. Mainly because I don’t know how glass was shipped in the 30’s. Possible loads would be sand, coal (for the power plant), and tin (again not sure how this would be shipped)
Tractor Impelment dealer/Seed Dealer with team track - Anchors a part of one of my towns.
There will be others, but these are the ones that have purchased at the moment.
Transload center, team or RIP track, cement plant.
You can spot anything on a RIP track, including cars that you have no customer for on your layout. You can spot almost anything on a x-load or team track.
Cement plant b/c I need a place to spot those 2-bay and aggregate hoppers, although there is a small yard near me where BNSF leaves cuts of 2-bays. Haven’t figured out yet why they leave them there though.
Small iron foundry outlet and general freight.
What a bunch of great replies! I think all industry is intersting - a symbol of a strong economy in our miniature empires; lots of jobs, lots of products, lots of rail traffic.
I tend towards industry in the 1970s - 1990s, and think pulp and paper mills are extremely intersting, challenging to model, and provide a lot of diversity in rail traffic (wood chips, chemicals and possibly fuel oil coming in using hoppers and tank cars; finished paper or pulp coming out in box cars.) The modeling possibilities are almost endless - lots of lights for nightime operation, sound simulators for the wide range of steam, motors, blowers, and other systems at work, smoke generators or steam simulators, operating conveyor belts, bulldozers, forklifts, etc. etc. I could probably spend 10 years modeling a paper mill and easily use two 4 x 8 tables to do it in HO scale.
I also agree, however, with every other post here. Coal is just as interesting and as important (or more so) as an industry. Various livestock operations lend themselves to great detail modeling. Produce like fruit and grain also offers great opportunities to show the strength of a nation by the people it can feed (and the food it can move!) Steel looks very impressive and intersting as well. Give me 10 years and a 10,000 square foot layout room!!
I model Detroit – a shortline / bridgeline set in the 60’s in the inner city- a very short shortline. Many fo the industries are going to be auto related. Anyway, I plan on having the following:
brewery boxcars, reefers, and covered hoopers
scrap yard (auto shredder which was located on 8 mile west of Hoover) gons, flats,
part of an auto plant boxcars, tank cars, chem cars
foundry hoppers, flats, boxcars
warehouses boxcars, insulated boxes, flats
meat packing stock cars, tank cars blood, fats,etc., boxcars and reefers
chemical plant tanks cars, covered hoppers and boxcars
stamping plant boxcars, gons for scrap
produce warehouse reefers and boxcars
team track --just about anything
two - three interchanges any type of cars
fuel dealer tanks
There are more, mostly related to the auto industry in some fashion. Try the OPS SIG through the NMRA – I downloaded a listing of industries by state, broken down by city from their website. It is an amazing document that can give you some good ideas as to which industries a city had and the types of cars they used. Best wishes
I model the Palouse so that means grain, grain and more grain. Oh, and a few shipments of fertilizer thrown in. Grain is outbound is covered hoppers. Fertilizer inbound in tankcars.
Eric
With several layouts under my belt in 40 some years of the hobby, and a new one abuilding, the plan is as follows:
Since I will model the Southern Pacific in the Santa Clara Valley and Santa Cruz Mountains, my industries will include the massive sand business in that area, associated cement businesses, wineries, fruit packing houses and processors such as Contadina and Del Monte and businesses of a local flavor such as a fuel distributor, two lumber yards, several team tracks, and an unusual business known by locals as the Apricot Pit, a place where apricot shells were ground up and processed for the oils’ use in various cosmetics and national branded facial creams.
The sand and cement business uses covered hoppers and hoppers both inbound and out; the fruit packers will take refrigerator cars in as empties and out with loads, some boxcars and the occasional gon for scrap; the fuel distributor will of course see tank cars and the lumber yards will get flatcars and the occasional boxcar. The apricot pit got its shells via truck; outbound loads of oils were shipped in tank cars and 40 foot boxcars.
Ive always liked the B&O with some very heavy WM, Ma and Pa, PRR, Southern and EBT influence. I keep three different time periods. One pre ww1, one post ww2 and one chessie era for anything 1965 on to the 80’s If I was to get into CSX? Well, it may not happen anytime soon.
I freelance my road as if it was a division of the B&O and try to keep things rather simple with no fixed reference to real life location. I run this road for me and maybe someday for others to visit and operate as a crew when sufficiently finished.
With that said here is the industrial matrix I have so far.
Falls Valley
Team Track.
a- Crane
b- Platform
c- Conveyor availible for material like rock, sand, coal etc.
d- pump shack for tanker to tractor trailer either air or fluid transfer.
Let’s say I dont have room to model a full town right now. This team track recieves loads like… a new Cat Road Grader off a flatcar to a local construction company busy building a road “Off layout”
Or it can ship furnature like a sofa into a LCL boxcar or several peices at once without having to model a furnature factory. The local trucking company will take care of the team track transfer freight and provide me with a variety of loads in or out (Or both) Like News print rolls and a few hours later news papers out of the LCL warehouse nearby.
Cold Storage- Perishables of all kinds down to zero degrees. Has a ice rack to handle reefers as well.
Warehouse. That shipment of dutch made brooms will take a while to sell as people need them for the season. Need a place to store it until the store in town puts in a order for a few more.
Creamery. Milk tanker cars come in early in the morning and fill from farmers bring cans of raw milk. Eventually that milk car goes to the big city to be turned into milk, butter etc and to be cleaned.
Feed mill. I dont have too much specfic for it, the best I can do is bring in molasses that has been used up at Do
Rexam Plastics makes various gadgets made out of plastic. Receives plastic pellets in large covered hoppers, various chemicals in tank cars, packing materials by boxcars. Ships pallets of boxed finished products in boxcars (and by truck).
Crown cork & seal manufactures bottle caps and other packaging materials. They receive aluminum sheets, cork sheets, plastic, glue and materials for labeling/packing & distributing their products. Ships pallets of boxed finished products in boxcars (and by truck)
Menasha paper packaging makes flatpacked cardboard boxes for other industries. Receives various types of paper and cardboard in boxcars, ships pallets of flatpacked cardboard boxes by boxcar (and by truck).
Progressive Rail warehouse, Wausau Supply Co and Ryt Way distribution all receves boxcars of pallets of boxed products on pallets that are stored temporily inside their warehouses for further distribution locally by truck. Progressive Rail’s warehouse also loads and ships various products for customers - packaged stuff on pallets in boxcars, and agricultural machinery on flatcars.
ISG resources team track receives tank cars that are unloaded directly into tank trucks by portable pumps, centerbeam cars with lumber products for the building trade, hoppers of sand and bark (for landscaping) that are unloaded into a pit under the track and lifted out into piles by a conveyor belt, flatcars of machinery that are unloaded by a contractor with a portable crane that is hired when needed.
Twin City Brick Co receives bricks on pallets in boxcars, distributes by trucks.
Poly Tech pipe co receives metal and plastic pipe on flatcars and in gondolas.
ChemCentral receives various chemicals in tank cars, unloads into storage tanks. Distrbutes from storage tanks by tank truck to various local industries.
Cloverleaf Cold Storage receives reefers with chilled/fro
I’ve made for my rr a list
http://www.westportterminal.de/wtindustries.html
Wolfgang
My list of industries is more or less dictated by the prototype (C&O Hawks Nest Branch) being modeled:
3 Coal tipples
Grocery Supply Warehouse
Team Track - mostly for pulpwood loading
LCL at station
There’s enough traffic for 4 daily trains (2 mine run, 2 local mixed freight) on the branch, plus 4 through trains on the main below.
Charles
I’m keeping mine simple, and based on what I know from where I grew up…along the tracks through a small midwest town…
I wish I had room for another industry…maybe something like a grocery/produce warehouse…but I don’t.
For the most part, the region determines the industry.
Partially true, but there are many industries that can be found in any region, for example, a bulk oil dealer or a grocery wholesaler.
Also note that some industries vary by climate. Coal yards and fuel oil dealers would be move common in the north then south.
Have fun