Industrial ideas

Jason,

A number of us involved in conducting a show in PA and the steel industry recently began a new group to introduce modelers to more industries to model:  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/steelmodelgroup/ Currently, we have two steel and one oil refinery group, which may give you some ideas.

Some ideas for you could include a heavy duty foundry or fabrication shop that has to ship out by rail, and may ship in pig iron, coke and limestone. The foundry would also require wood for making patterns. Another possibilty is to use the cement from Medusa to feed a pre-cast concrete beam company. I have seen a smalll refinery that was very similar to Walther's kit as well.

If you want to represent steel, many facilities only ran coke ovens or a blast furnace. Today's modern mini-mills use scrap and pig iron to feed an electric arc furnace. The steel is rolled on site into raw stock or finished goods.

Yet another idea was featured in a Trains article from 1996 I believe. A short line servicing International Falls MN served an appliance factory like Maytag or Whirlpool. Loads in brought steel coil in gondolas or coil cars and intermodal boxes full of parts and packaging. Finished goods were boxed and loaded into the intermodal boxes for distribution centers.

I am sure I can come up with more if you are interested. As I do not check out this forum much, need to fix that, please send me a line.

Regards,

Stogie

An oil distributor is a nice compact model scene.

When I worked in the Los Angeles Harbor there was an oil distributor across the street from the terminal where I worked.  There was a fairly large "tank farm" that could be represented with a few oil tanks and most of the tanks on the backdrop.  There was a two track stub spur set that held about 6 tank cars, three on each track, with an oil manifold to the side of the tracks.  If I remember correctly, there was hoses coming up out of the ground between the tracks to allow hook ups for unloading tank cars on the second track, or they might have been long enough to stretch across the inside track to the outer track.  Right nearby was a small building that could easily be represented by a Pike Stuff "Butler building" that was used to store cases of engine oil in gallons, and quarts.  That building may have also been used to store oil in 55 gallon drums.  They would receive a box car or two at the oil unloading terminal once or twice a month, and the product would be unloaded by fork lift and taken to that small warehouse building.  I think there was a small office building in back of the spurs opposite the unloading manifold.  The office building was stucco with a flat roof and about the size of a gas station/mini mart.   The product went out in trucks.  I think they received 3-6 tank cars every week, maybe a couple of times in a week, and two or three boxcars a week.

 Stogie, Thanks for the

Stogie,

Thanks for the information and the link.  Will join up to the group in the next couple of days.  I like the idea of the concrete beam company!  Nice...

Cheers,

Jas...

Russ, Yes I like the idea of

Russ,

Yes I like the idea of an oil refinery or oil/petrol storage facility.  Have a small one planned for the layout based on two Walthers McGraw Oil kits and using the Walthers Oil Loading platform kit.

Jas...

Industrial area scene

Hi Jason --

 Edit: after locating Jason's other threads, I realized that this thread was an orphan (posted in mid-march originally, and left to hang until recently resurrected by an answer) - he has already gotten some good advice in his other two threads. Feel free to ignore the advice offered by me in this post.

 I haven't gone out to look for your drawing of your lower level, so I don't know what kind of space you have available for your city/industry scene.

 But I would suggest that you start by thinking about what kind of place you want to model. What part of the US would your city be in? What era is your layout based on?

 Small town? Industrial neighborhood of a big city? Inland or coastal?   Some types of buldings would look at home in a layout placed in the Appalachian mountains in the 1940s, some in a layout based on southern California in the 1990s, some would look good in a smaller inland town in Washington state in the 1970s and so on and so forth.

 And of course - what it says on the outside of the box doesn't need to have anything to do with what that building (or kitbashes partly based on that building) ends up as on your layout

 Smile,
 Stein

Stein is correct.

The sort of buildings, scenery, plants, geology, is entirely different from one part of the U.S. to another.  In fact it varies widely in So Cal just because houses built in the city and suburbs along the Coast from San Diego to San Francisco probably see snow once every 20 years, and it lasts only an hour or two at most.  A house built in Big Bear, or Idlewyld at an elevation exceeding 6000 feet will be built to withstand monster snow loads.  East of the Rocky mountains where there is a lot of winter snow, shutters are common on most houses.  On the West coast, if you see them at all, they wioll usually be nonfunctional, decorative pieces. 

Left hanging and clueless

That might explain why the request seemed silly because without knowing the era and location modeled, one is left pretty much clueless to answer.

Hey Stein, I will take your

Hey Stein,

I will take your advice because as you have more than likely noticed I'm in Australia and you guys over there have all the knowledge of areas and industries that could be modelled and which I will be modelling.  As I stated in my original layout plan thread I am looking to model from the 70's through to current (Diesel era onwards).  I have posted givens & druthers in the other thread, and one example that was suggested to me was the Southern & Pacific (SP) because of the vast amount of power & stock available and the interest that I also have to that part of the area.

As I have mentioned previously I am leaning very strongly towards a completely freelanced layout, based somewhat loosely and around RR's that appeal to me.  I'm trying to find an area that would see interchanges between the following RR's  SP, Sante Fe, CSX, Burlington Northern, UP, as these all appeal to me.  So I'm still in the throws of deciding at the moment, any ideas that anybody is willing to pass on will be greatly appreciated and thrown into the mixing bowl to hopefully come up with a workable layout.

I recently received my two must have books "track planning for realistic operations" by John Armstrong & "designing & building multi-deck model railroads" by Tony Koester.  After reading both of these my bottom deck has changed considerably and for the better.  I am now considering making both decks purely industrial/city scenes with several interchanges and based on a purely switching layout.

So please if you have ideas or information pass them on, they will be greatly appreciated, and used in the planning process.

Regards,

Jason...

Industries

Jason , Fellows

My experience these past few years of HO industrial railroading has begotten some basic ideas. The formost is having railroad sized industry , A bit of snap track and a smallish building will not generate much carloadings.

Simulated {off scene} portions of a much larger industry are desireable,  giving the {on scene} bits plausibility . Tracks , loading / un loading need be suffiecent to generate carloading and thus traffic . I find that two tracks are better than one in an industry , another switch and the length needed for clearance is the cost .

My Rly is using car cards and waybills controlling four forty foot , or five shorter cars in sets which makes more train , less paper. The begets sidings designed to hold a set , or two sets. most times two tracks side by side.Industies need not take up alot of acerage . My cement plant worked out very well in a wedge shape which did not require turning tracks at ninety degrees to the layout or the length of long thin industry

Interchange yards or tracks are a very helpful traffic generator / absorber . This follows for carfloats {floating interchange ?} These are handy in the taking of any type car and lots of them . This is analagous to the on scene bits of the industry .

I have a blog on the site shewing these uses of space . Tidewater rly .

There is no place where all of your railroads would interchange.

As far as I know there is no place in the country where all of those railroads mentioned would actually interchange, unless they all meet in Chicago, but an actual interchange is not necessary in your preferred era.  You might need to narrow down your era a bit.  If you model 1970's to early 1990's before the mergers of UP, SP, &CNW, and BNSF, or within a few months after those mergers,you could run locomotives painted for all of those railroads.  Of course, during the time frame immediately following the UP takeover of the SP & CNW, the UP was so fouled up that their trains weren't running, rather they were running out of fuel on all of the sidings on the system. LOL.  Within a few months of the mergers, most of the locomotives were patched, that is they remained in their original railroad colors, but would have a painted patch on the cab with UP or BNSF stenciled on. 

Currently, most of the locomotives in the affected railroads, have been repainted into UP armour yellow or BNSF pumpkin scheme.  There are still a few yellow & blue freight switchers patched for BNSF in local switching service and a few left over red & silver warbonnets that are really looking sad runing on the BNSF.

If you model in the time period before the mergers, late 1980s to early 1990s, mergers took place in 1992 if I remember correctly, you can still run all of those road names without needing interchanges.  All of the major railroads contribute locomotives to a common pool called pool power.  I'm not sure when the practice started, I think probably in the 1980's.  Railroads contributed excess power units to the pool and leased needed power from the pool. 

Here in Southern California we had three class one railroads operating, the SF, SP, and UP.  Shortly following the ICC forced break up of the porposed SPSF merger, the SP was bought by the DRGW and the DRGW name was dropped in favor of the SP, but the UP bought the SP before a significant number of locomotives were repainted from DRGW to SP, so we saw DRGW power mixed with SP power regularly.

Because of pool power, I saw power units from CSX, N&S, Conrail, and BN mixed on to all three railroad's trains.  I think is saw a few MRL units here, but don"t remember for sure.  I also saw a bunch of maroon & silver GE demonstrators on the SP, because they had some mechanical problems with an order of new GE units and GE sent them a bunch of the demonstrator units for "loaners" while SP locomotives were taken back to the factory of repairs.  SF also had a bunch of plain grey locomotives (I don't remeber if they were GE or EMD) because they were power short and received locomotives in primer instead of finish paint to get them online quicker.

After the mergers, particularly the UP merger, a lot of excess power went to leasing companies.  I saw leased power on the UP with a leasor's name on a UP armour yellow and grey units, as well as a rainbow of colors on locomotives from various leasing fleets.

The point is that if you model from the 1980s-2008, you can run almost any then current paint scheme on any  train without needing interchanges.

 Thanks for the information

Thanks for the information Russ, 1980's to 1990's would suit me down to a tee for an era to model within.  Also great to know that I will be able to model most of the RR's that I mentioned because of a wonderful thing called pool power.  I'm actually a bit disappointed about the interchange, however if I stick to my original thoughts of a freelanced/mythical railroad based in area like you suggested I may still add one.  I really liked the idea of interchange that would run off to hidden staging and allow for increased operations.

Do you have any links to photos or reference material for that era and the RR's that I mentioned and that you have also suggested relating to "pool power"?

Thanks once again for all the help!

Jason...

The use of an interchange is

The use of an interchange is more than just getting different roads on your layout. As you said it is a SOURCE and DESTINATION for cars, a great industry if your are going to use a car fowarding system. And ANY type of car can be used as well. So there are many benefits to have one. Go for it Jason.

Steve 

Thanks Steve, it is

Thanks Steve, it is increasingly appealing to me the more I think about.  I just have to use a little lateral thinking, and my good books to figure out how to achieve it!  It will be ideal for solving my space issue for forwarding my coal runs to a fictional industry and the return of empties from a hidden staging area off the interchange/branch.

Jason...

Docks

Its hard to beat the bang for the buck you get from a harbor scene. Not only do you get a concentrated industrial area, you get a wide variety of goods and the cars that carry them.

At a recent presentation at a NMRA meeting I got a handout that was a copy of an article about why a harbor scene is the ideal industrial switching scenario for a model railroad. It makes an excellent case.. not just that it is interesting but that that it is very well suited to the constraints of a model railroad.

Byron discusses the plan here: Schoof's "Free Haven Terminal" – Inspirational Layout #8

If you can find the original article its really quite good.

This and other recent experiences operating experiences have led me to think that some kind of wharf scene needs to make it into my layout..

Chris

Maritime area Railways

Chris , fellows.

Ships big, load lots . Train carry lots. That said , the areas of ship / train exchange are usually busy congested areas which are interesting to me. However some of the Ann Arbor railroad "transfer "? areas seem rather open .

A small carfloat does not need a big area. Carfloat "A" on the Tidewater line takes two square feet  . The fellow who sticks to a certain prototype is limited to what was . I have in mind  that some of my floats go "upriver " , or down , as the case may be.

This is very much like car lading in my operation . We do not want to know , do not care . We move freight cars , what the secretarial pool does with BOL's is their business.

I like harbor scenes , so I model them . The added bonus is that a float is an interchange yard , is a float ..etc..moral is , any car , any time . A great thing to have on a model railroad.

Building on Charlie's Idea

Robert Smaus did a series of articles in the early 1990's on the Port of Los Angeles as a compact model portable layout.  The articles are reprinted by Kalmbach several years ago in one of their layout planning books - but darned if I can remember the name.

This one?

That was Byron's Inspriational Layout #1 I think..

It was a great series of articles... I was reading through those Model Railroaders last summer.

Chris

Hey Chris we have something

Hey Chris we have something in common.  I wanted to originally have a harbour/wharf/shipping container yard on my layout.  

Although with the space available it would have taken up a lot of room.  The link you provided to Byron's blog is fantastic, some really good information in there for newbies such as myself to absorb.

Thanks,

Jason...

Now something along this line

Now something along this line could work well!......  Great Link.  

Thanks Philip & Chris.

Jason, interchanges are great.

The only problem is that interchanges only occur where two or more railroads are in close proximity of each other.  I'm not familiar with the entire railroading scene in the US & Canada.  The U.S. is about 3000 miles wide East-West, adn probably 2000 miles North-South.  Railroads originally developed in this country in specific regions.  The U.P. is headquartered in Omaha, Neb.  and runs roughly from the Mississippi River to the West Coast.  Santa Fe ran from Southern California to Chicago and the Gulf Coast of Texas to Chicago.  The Northern Pacific, Great Northern, Milwaukee Road, and the Chicago Burlington & Quincy (if I remember correctly) ran in the Northwest from Chicago to Seattle, Wa and Portland, Or.  Other railroads ran in the Northeast to Chicago such as the New York Central and the Pennsy.  The Southern, Norfolk & Western, C & O, B & O, etc ran from the Southeast to Chicago. 

In addition there were a few regional carriers that didn't get all the way from where they were headquartered to Chicago or either coast.  They would interchange with railroads in their area that did go to either Chicago or one of the coasts.

The point of all of this is that you can add a lot of operational interest with interchanges, but you can't realistically interchange with every railroad in the U.S. 

We have not even begun to discuss the different climates and therefore different scenery in various parts of this country.

I would suggest that you pick out what part of the U.S. you would prefer to model, then put in interchanges between all of the railroads that are in that area.  If I remember correctly from your opening post, you like the UP, SP, SF, and CSX.  The Santa Fe ran through the Southwest, but the only places where they interchanged with the UP was near Barstow at Yermal where the UP had a prototype staging yard for trains to go on SF trackage to go down Cajon Pass, and in the Los Angeles area.  The SF has trackage rights over Tehachapi, and runs a line part way up the Central Valley parrallel to the S.P. into Oakland.  The San Francisco Chief used to terminate in Oakland with ferry service across the bay to San Francisco. 

The SP ran up and down the Pacific Coast between California North to Portland, Or.  I'm not sure if they ever crossed over the Columbia River into Washington.  The SP's main route East was over Donner Pass to meet the UP in Ogden, Utah.  The UP also bought the WP about 1972 which gave them the route through the Feather River Canyon into the San Francisco Bay area. 

The UP also operated into the Pacific Northwest, but Like the SP, I don't know if they got into Washington or not.  I think they did reach Oregon, and I know they went into the Idaho panhandle.

About the same time as the UP takeover of the WP, the Great Northern, NP, CB&Q, and Portland,Spokane & Seattle merged forming the Burlington Northern. 

The piont of all of this is that you could realistically have interchanges between SF, SP, and UP in Southern Ca.  You could have an interchange between UP & SP in Northern Ca, but I'm not sure if the SF had any interchanges in Northern Ca. with the UP.  I think they did have some with the SP. 

CSX has never been West of the Mississippi, so you would have to use pool power to have run CSX realistically with the other railroads.  If you model the Southeast to run CSX, you could have interchanges with other Southeastern railroads, but not the Western roads.

This has gotten kind of long, but I hope it is helpful to you. 

Russ not long at all, really

Russ not long at all, really good information actually I will do some more searching today...

Cheers,

Jas...

Some climate summaries that may help you.

If you look at a topographical map of the U.S. to see the mountains, that will tell you a lot about climate.  If I remember correctly, you are from Australia.  I've never been there except to see magazine and television pictures, but if I remember correctly, you have mountains down there surrounding the center of the country, so that along the coast there is plentiful rainfall, but the out back is very dry.  It is the same in North America.  Prevailing weather flows from bodies of water on to the land.  The mountains in the East are more worn down and thus of lower elevation than the West.  As a result prevailing weather from the Atlantic goes all the way inland to the Mississippi. They get a lot of snow in the Northeast quadrant as well as summer rain.

Since my wife and her family are from Long Island, the rest of her family did like so many New Yorkers moved to Florida when they retired, except all but one brother didn't wait for retirement to move.   When I was visiting her relatives in Florida, they were talking about how bad the drought was, and it was aparent.  My brother in law and I were riding dirt bikes in a nearby lake bed that would normally be full of water.  I was shocked when they said it had not rained in three weeks!  In Florida it normally rains almost every day of the year at some time during the day!  The result is that from the Mississippi East, the vegetation is very green and dense.  There are also large rivers flowing East to West into the Mississippi or South into the Gulf.  West of the Appalachians there are large rivers flowing into the Atlantic.

In the Midwest between the Rockie mountains and the Mississippi, ther aren't as many rivers and not as much rainfall.  They do get rain from the storms coming North out of the Gulf of Mexico, but if I remember correctly, the only really big river system flowing West to East is the Misouri River. 

Coming farther West, the part of the country between the Sierra Nevadas in Eastern California and The Rockies is very dry.  To the South is Mexico, and North is Canada, so there is no body of water in any direction that prevailing winds can pick up moisture from and drop rain on the area.  Most of the water for that part of the country comes from snow fall in winter, and snow melt in the high mountains in summer.

In the far West, Oregon, Washington, and California North of San Francisco, receive a lot of rain on the coast.  In the areas East of the Cascades, the land is as dry as the Southwest.  Eastern Washington probably has a smaller area of dry land than Oregon because the Columbia river starts in or near Canada and flows south to just East of Hood River, Oregon and then flows West to the Pacific, and it is a large watershed. 

In California, the central valley extends from just South of Mts. Shasta and Lassen to the mountains just South of Bakersfield.  The San Juaquin River Flows North to Sacramento and the American and Sacramento Rivers Flow South and Southwest to have all three meet in the Sacramento Delta and flow West to the San Francisco Bay.  That is some of the richest farm land in the nation.

Southern California from Los Angeles South to San Diego is very dry.  Our average rainfall is about 13 inches per year.  Just North of Los Angeles the Mountains run East from Ventura to San Bernardino where they turn south and go through to the East of San Bernardino to Mexico.  The result is that 50 -75 miles East of the Pacific Ocean in So Cal the desert starts, and everything East of those mountains is desert.  In addtiton our mountains in So Cal don't receive as much rainfall or snow as the Mountains in Northern Ca., Or. or Wa.  Logging is a major industry in Or., Wa., and Northern Ca., but it is almost non existant in So Cal.

Hopefully this will give you an idea of what industries to model in the area you choose.  By the way if you want to model the lumber industry, but you want to model So Cal, you won't see trains full of logs down here, but you will see a lot of bulkhead flats from up North delivering lumber products to lumber yards here in So Cal.  Actually I'm not sure how many logging operations are even done by train anymore.  I think most logging is hauled out by truck since the 1950's.

I hope this is helpful.

Gun pawder, Fertilizers, matches, and other explosives, Oh My!

 Now, I'll assume you are using a realitively small layout, so space could be an issue. How about an industry requiring Sulfuric acid or molten sulfer?  I know that fertilizers, gun powder, matches, and some other explosive industries (explosives, the most dangerous and interesting invention known to man) use molten sulfur and sulfuric acid, and, due to there high density, are shipped in short tank cars.

On another assumption, I guess you are modeling in HO scale. If so, I would like to reccomend the Railyard models company. They have resin models of both tank car types, and are fairly easy craftsman kits to assemble. I must warn you,though, these kits do cost a pretty penny (about $40.00 for the sulfuric acid model) but they are really nice with the details, and the instructions go way in-depth to every part of the build. (No, I'm not a Rail Yard Models employee, owner, representative, etc.,etc.)

 That's just my $0.02 on this,  but here's the link if you decide to go this route:

http://railyardmodels.com

Jumping back to the original

Jumping back to the original post - Illinois has most of these industries.  Ethanol plant in Rochelle on the BNSF, cement plant on the BNSF near the town of Oregon, intermodal yards up the wazoo, coal mining in southern Illinois although they aren't the monsters you see in Wyoming.  I'm sure there's meatpacking somewhere around here although Chicago is no longer "hog butcher of the world".  And there are many, many railroad junctions and interchanges.  Mountains and deserts however, we do NOT have...