Without freight, most railroads wouldn’t survive so what industries does your railroad (proto or freelance) cater to?
For my modern layout. I have…
Oil
Coal
Ethanol
Intermodal
Those are the four big industries I have for my prototype.
My railroad cater to
-Bagged charcoal
-Bricks
-Dry bagged cement
-mineral
-steel products
-Lumber
-Lumber built products
-Imported goods via barge
Mine are, logs, lumber, cattle, milk, other dairy, oil and every manner of crated freight. I have a carfloat interchange so just about anything can come that way.
Cool
For my modern era freelanced layout:
Freight:
-grain elevators X3
-medium sized fertilizer facility
-medium sized animal feed stores/agricultural goods/farmers co-op
-CAT heavy equipment dealership
Passenger:
-one nostalgic tourist train (EMD F7a and F7b with streamliner passenger/vist dome cars).
-plans to acquire a small Amtrak consist…just plans right now [:-^]
Happy modeling!
Don.
Brewery (three spurs)
Printing plant (two spurs)
we have a winner lol
How many cars a day?
just about anything farmers and apple distributors can respectively shoehorn into cars or fight with to remove from the cars.
How much do you charge? 
I will and/or do have a few agricultural type industries on the layout. The big business though will be a Rocky Mountain Pusher Station. With all the track and service buildings required to keep those monsters in fighting form, it will take up a lot of space and thus be the centre of attention on my layout.
Like most switching lines the customer base changes.
Current customers:
SCR handles:
Food stuffs
Plastics
Tobacco
Alcohol beverages
crushed glass
steel pipes
construction equipment
Lumber
Line poles
Summerset Ry.
Foodstuffs
Manufactured goods.
Scrap rubber
Scrap plastic.
Huron River
Grain
Manufactured goods.
Chemicals.
not sure I’d have to dig up prices for the NP, GN, BN, and BNSF. then I’ll try to make a realistic price for DRST cars.
Awesome
I’m sure you will have a profitable line by now.
Actually at that time period you would not have gotten to make a rate. Rates were regulated by the government. Railroad rates weren’t deregulated until the Staggers act of 1980.
My harbor layout cars are brought in and out via rail barge. Industries and businesses served include: Wharf shipping warehouses Power plant Soda bottling/distributor Import warehouse Brewery A few small warehouses
ok, thanks texas! and they say you don’t learn something new everyday.
I’m building a tannery, which will get its hides from my meat packing plant, along with salt and acid from “elsewhere.”
I load coal at a mine and also unload it at a coal and oil dealership at another point on the layout.
I’ve also got a brewery, a cloth-oriented factory called Moose Mills, and the Powder Milk Biscuit Company. Then there’s Interstate Pipe, the Drosophila and Melanogaster Wholesale Fruit warehouse and a scrapyard.
It may not be an “industry,” but the icing platform for ice-bunker reefers is very much a part of the process for shipping meat and fruit. It also serves the express reefers that will visit the Railway Express Agency once that’s built.
Finally, I have a car float that serves to take goods to and from some unknown place off the layout. Again, it’s not an “industry,” but it can be thought of as one in the context of operations and switching.