Your Favorite Underappreciated Industries?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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I recently have been on a bit of a salt mine/plant researching kick. Out on the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake in my local area, we have a lot of solar ponds for salt evaporation. Following I80 its pretty common to see several salt plants along the drive, most have large piles of salt outdoors being loaded and processed into covered hoppers or boxcars for outbound shipment. I have also been researching a bit on the lost Inland Crystal Salt Railway, a steam powered plant servicing railroad from the early 20th century that served one of the larger Utah salt plants. Its entire right of way has been destroyed by tailings ponds, and as such the existance of the railroad had been rather obscure for most railfans.

So I guess my question is, any other industries that people like that they feel aren’t well represented in the hobby? Maybe some great alternatives to the old coal dealers, warehouses, lumber yards and other common model railroading industries?

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My Rocky Mountain pusher station will be my big industry. It is a good excuse for having lots of locomotives with all the required service facilities without having to worry about the rolling stock population.[(-D]

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Coors. The Coors brewry in Golden, CO is an industry that I am modeling on my new layout. The place is huge and has its own rail yard, loco shop, coal power plant, and switchers. There is so much traffic on it, you could make an entire layout on it and be busy swiching cars out. The list of rolling stock includes tank cars, covered hoppers, coal hoppers, flat cars, and refer and non insulated box cars.

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I never really thought of it before, but Railsandsails thread, and Ulrich’s pic of the docksider reminded me that regular delivery of newsprint to newspapers would be a great urban scene.

My favorite industry was a Baltimore company, Streigel a locomotive parts seller and scrap yard. https://www.railfanguides.us/baltimore/striegel/index.htm

Also sorts of old locos and pieces thereof sitting outside the warehouse.

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Anything agricultural.

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It seems that model railroaders think the Grain Elevator, Citrus Plant, and Feed Mill are the ONLY rail served agricultural industries. I rarely recall seeing feritlizer plants, canning plants, or the countless other industries revolving around agriculture.

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-Kevin

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Yea, I have a plastic injection molding plant that requires pellets, in covered hoppers designed for such, I have a food/bakery plant that exports frozen vegies, frozen fruit, all packaged and ready for rail car to truck to store distribution, bakery products, fresh and frozen, milled and processed flour, (to other plants by the same company), incoming includes corn syrup, sweetners, tomatoe sauce, cooking oil, packaging, and grain.

I also have a pulp wood loading station, and, a transload yard, for powdered cement, plastic pellets, fertilizer, and such, along with any LTC and flat car loading, and overhead crane area, and fork lifts that can handle containers.

I tried to make all areas that could generate and justify rail traffic, in a more “modern” area.

I have pictures, but not availiable until PhotoBucket gets back. [*-)]

Mike.

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The Smithfield, Utah canning plant once apparently provided enough rail traffic to keep the entire UP Cache Valley Branch very busy while the cannery was operating. The cannery had been shut down well before I ever got to see that line in action, so the line only saw 1 or 2 trains a week during my time there.

Also I should mention the sugar industry. In the western US the sugar beat industry was huge, and Idaho still has a massive sugar beat plant that is currently operating. I saw quite a lot of sugar cane in Argentina, and while the rail service is minimal now back in the day there used to be large in plant narrow gauge railroads that ran sugar cane from the fields to the “Ingenios” where the sugar was refined.

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Some of these are well represented in kits, but some need to be studied a bit to bring them to life. I got one of the Arrowhead Ale background buildings, and built it on an aisle, leaving the open side still open to detail the interior. I picked up a few Greenway ice bunker reefers with beer billboard sides, and I was in business.

I had some empty space to fill, and someone on the forum suggested the Walthers tannery kit. It came with a one-page description of tanneries, which gave me ideas for more rail traffic. I ended up with a a chemical car for acid, a covered hopper for the made-up Saltzburg salt, and a couple of old boxcars labelled “Hide Service Only.”. With a bit of research and a couple of more turnouts, I had a bunch more traffic and a nice bit of scenery besides.

Finally, a last industry is the icing platform. This is a multi-faceted industry. It serves that brewery and the slaughterhouse, too, which supplies the tannery with hides as well. The icing platform also serves the Railway Express reefers, and can even be a stop for through freight needing to cool down

So, think of your layout as a blank canvas. Paint it with structures, which just need a couple of signs to make them into any industry you’d like, but think about how multiple industries play together.

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Since I’m here in Chesapeake Bay country, I’m going to have a pleasure boat factory.

And I am planning on an automobile assembly plant.

Back in 1954, there was a lot of manufacturing around here, almost anything you can name.

Sheldon

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Sugar Beets… Booooooooooo!

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Down here we grow Sugar Cane, the good stuff.

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United States Sugar Corporation in Clewston, Florida has their own railroad.

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-Kevin

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For Christmas cookies, my peeps in Atlanta sent us ten pounds of cane sugar and five pounds of pecans.

Wyoming sugar doesn’t caramelize like it should, and walnuts taste like dirt. But I gotta say, Mormon butter is pretty good.

Robert

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Albeit remote, mill stones for grist mills and their byproducts. I have a flat car designated for that industry and will use 3/4"& 1" OD wood dowel to mimic the finished or unfinished mill stones.

Tom

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Newspapers also need a lot of ink. Good reason for tank cars.

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Was newspaper ink ever shipped in Tank Cars?

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I have watched the News-Press get switched here in Fort Myers, Florida for 30+ years and never seen anything but boxcars get moved onto their siding.

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Were tank cars used earlier?

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-Kevin

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I’ll be including a sugar beet loader on the upper level of my layout, as it was once a fairly common industry in southwestern Ontario.
I had also planned to model a “suggestion” of a quarry - not really modelled at all, but hidden behind a hill, with mostly empty hoppers going in, and loads coming out.

I also wanted to do the same with a rendering plant - too big to model effectively, and it looks like it’s still too big to even be a background scene. I’ll likely model just the gondola loads of offal, coming from one staging area and destined to another.
Likewise for meatpacking plants, hide processors and the steel industry, with as many as I care to have represented in the various staging yards. None of them are modelled, although they may receive from- or ship-to other industries modelled on the layout, or ones in other staging areas.

I have a couple of grocery wholesalers, a cigarette factory, and a casket maker, too, and stockpens in several locations.

I have several coal and ice dealers, factories of many types, freighthouses, team tracks, and some farm-related industries, with more planned.

However, the biggest traffic generator on my layout is GERN Industries, with tank cars bringing raw materials in and taking finished product out, as do covered hoppers and boxcars. Flatcars also appear, delivering new processing machinery or taking older machinery for re-building elsewhere.
With three sidings in use, and switching available 24 hours a day, it’s a real money-maker…

I can justify just about any freight car appropriate to my layout’s era, and even run a few that aren’t exactly era-appropriate.

Wayne

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Newspaper ink is very thick and viscous, incredibly messy, and relatively expensive per pint. I have never seen it shipped to clients by rail in anything but relatively small containers, in boxcars or containers, probably on pallets for moving and storage.

I won’t say ‘never’ but it would be really, really unlikely.

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I’m a customer and a huge fan.

Keep the patronage posted on your modeling project. Does sound interesting to me.

TF

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Wayne,

I wonder what percentage of us are familiar with the term “offal” - at least enough to imagine what gondola loads of it looked like. Just how do you model the loads - and do they come with scale aroma? What a notion for a hot summer day in Ontario!

And as for GERN Industries, I understand that they are rather an item of some fancy on the forum. Just what does this plant produce? “Inquiring minds want the know”. [;)]

Happy New Year, all.

John

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I recall reading an article in Trains magazine, where someone talked of handling those cars in the summer, and how some not-too-careful operation by the train’s engineer would cause the loads to slosh over the sides and ends of the car.

While most of the loads I make for my open cars (gondolas, and hoppers) are “live” - loose material, such as coal, coke, gravel, scrap, and some steel products, I’m pretty sure that “live” loads of offal would also require the aroma and the swarms of flies, the latter being very time-consuming to build.

I have, however, been saving parts cut from LPBs - feet, legs, parts of bums, tops of heads - in order to make them fit into vehicles, and thought about using those parts, but it would require a lot of such surgery to fill two or three gondolas.
Perhaps some tinted casting resin, with some coloured bits of styrene added would do, but to be honest, I’m not really sure how such a load would look.

The list of GERN products is endless, but here are a few examples:(click on the images for a larger view)

[IMG]https://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b399/doctorwayne/GERN%20Advertising%20an

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Not all that long ago a semi truck was involved in an accident and dumped 5,000 gallons of printer ink on Interstate 285 in Atlanta.

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Supposedly, according to local legend, it was the most expensive highway accident in American history.

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-Kevin

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