Out here there was the former Hercules Explosives plant at Pinole Point on the southern shore of San Pablo Bay northeast of San Francisco,  For obvious reasons, the complex was spread out to avoid a concentration of structures, each separated by earthen berms and/or thick stands of eucalyptus trees.  (A different type of tree would be used in deep-freeze climates, but in any event have foilage/branches for the entire height of the tree.)   Such an industry is ideal because one can justify having to model only a small portion of it.   I'd have a track-served warehouse as well as a track for direct loading/unloading.  The rest of the plant would be imagined behind thick, man-planted stands of trees against a backdrop, with a road from the warehouse entering the "forest."  Simpler yet, one could just have a spur enter a man-made forest and hide it behind the trees.  Trees should be planted in even rows with alternate spacing, such as the black (or red) spaces on a checkerboard.

Mark

An L-girder can be made of just about anything.  I've seen the method with two 1X4s as you describe, so it will definitely work.  However, note that L-girder was initially developed to allow benchwork construction without accurate saw cuts, and to allow for access to many of the fasteners from below after the layout is finished (two of the main areas of emphasis of Linn Westcott, who is credited with popularizing L-girder).  If you have access to a modern chop saw, accurate square cuts are easy, so plain old open grid may be a good solution as well.  Open grid (think a stud wall built with smaller lumber like 1X4s) can have a thinner cross section than L-girder, and in my opinion is easier to build to withstand the stresses of moving, which you say is in the layout's future.

Aas for the 1/4" plywood, it's tough to find 1/4" in my area that isn't already warped, and it's not especially strong.  Nominal 1/2" or thicker plywood is much more resistant to warping and will hold up better.  Given that you're planning to use foam elsewhere, and intend to make the layout at least somewhat portable, you may want to skip the plywood and attach foam directly to the benchwork below it.  You could also laminate a couple layers of 2" foam for a base structure and skip the wood framework entirely to save more weight, at the expense of strength.

I'm not too familiar with the area you're modeling, but I do have a plywood mill on my layout.  It ships product in boxcars, preferably with 10' or greater door openings (the typical cars I saw at such mills during the ~1980 era I model), as well as bulkhead and center-beam flatcars.  I also have a chip loader to generate wood chip shipments.  You could also justify delivering tank car loads of chemicals used for such things as adhesives. There are a number of mills that produce multiple products in the same location, such as plywood, stick lumber, particle board and oriented strand board (OSB).  All of these can ship in essentially the same types of cars. and create more interesting switching in the same location.  You could make one whole side of the layout represent such a mill, and even just model the spur tracks while the actual mill buildings are "off the benchwork" somewhere to conserve space.

Good luck with your layout.

Hey Shortliner, I think I remember your old thread. IIRC You had designed a shortline with an interchange with CN at one end and a small town with a cement plant or mine of some sort at the other. I think you had a pretty workable concept at the end of that thread.

1) I plan on using L-Girder benchwork to make use of the leftover wood and save money. The articles I've read about it say to use a 1x4 with a 1x2 girder, however, would a 1x4 with a 1x4 girder work as well?

You could save more money by building simple box type benchwork rather than running L-girders below all your joists. Especially for a small layout or a shelf layout L-girder is way overengineered.

I'm confused though, immediately before this paragraph you mentioned building a door layout. Which is it? These guys building "door layouts" are actually literally building an N scale layout on an old hollow-core door. If you're building benchword, it's not a door layout, although the size might be similar.

Also, I plan on using 1/4" plywood as the base with 2" foam risers for the track made from leftover foam, then I'll use newpaper or a cardboard strips to form the terrain around it. Will the 1/4" plywood be strong enough to support this if I space the supports under it about 10" apart?

I don't see any problem with that. 1/4" is not incredibly stiff, but if the track is on 2" thick foam above that, that should be fine. FWIW, the long shelf portions of our club layout is 1/4" plywood on simple metal shelf brackets on 12-16" stud spacing. Risers are attached to the surface for the roadbed which is 1/2" thick pine spline.

2) This layout will be a modern shortline set in Central/Northern Ontario, so most industries will be based on forestry, mining, or supply industries such as fuel distributors. Besides the typical mine, lumber mill, and paper mill (which is too big for the layout) what are some industries related to forestry or mining (preferably forestry) that would recieve a variety of cars and have interesting operations? I plan on having a town on one side of the layout with one main industry and a smaller industry, and then scenery and one other industry on the other side. I was thinking about modeling an explosives plant, as I know there are some rail served ones in this region, but I can't find any info on them. Does anyone have any info? I was also thinking of a plywood mill, so what type of traffic would be associated with it as well? Any other suggestions are welcome and photos or google map links would be helpful if you have them

Based on the size you're describing, I take it the layout is probably a standard oval loop type layout? Since this sounds like a small oval layout, I'd probably put the town with a lumber or plywood mill and a fuel dealer on one side, and a log siding on the scenery side to supply the mill. Then you at least have a little on-layout operational possibility.

You might want an interchange track with another railway so your boxcars from the plywood mill and tankcars for the fuel dealer have somewhere to go.

The plywood mill would receive logs by rail or truck, the occasional load of resin/glue by tankcar or truck. (Probably one car every several weeks if by rail). Outbound shipments of plywood would be in double door boxcars to protect it from the weather. Alternatively, it could be a veneer mill which would see basically the same cars except no tanks.

I don't know a lot about the explosives plant, but I know there's on the CP Parry Sound sub. near Nobel. It gets covered hoppers of ammonium nitrate.

Thanks for your responses everyone. I think I'll go with the regular bracing and see how sturdy it is. The reason I wanted to go with L-Girder benchwork was because my last table style layout (before the one I recently tore down) was a bit wobbly, but I think that may have been the legs. I'll be using metal folding legs this time so they should be sturdier.

@cv_acr 

I'm confused though, immediately before this paragraph you mentioned building a door layout. Which is it? These guys building "door layouts" are actually literally building an N scale layout on an old hollow-core door. If you're building benchword, it's not a door layout, although the size might be similar.

I was originally going to build the layout on a door, but I decided to use the wood I already had to save costs. So, yes it's only a door sized layout.

I don't know a lot about the explosives plant, but I know there's on the CP Parry Sound sub. near Nobel. It gets covered hoppers of ammonium nitrate.

The one I was thinking of was on the end of the CN Newmarket Sub in North Bay. You can see it here. I know there used to be one in Nobel, but I thought it was gone since there aren't any traces of it on google maps. I did see some foundations and what looked like old rail lines north of Nobel on both sides of Hwy 69 though, if this is where it used to be

Based on the size you're describing, I take it the layout is probably a standard oval loop type layout? Since this sounds like a small oval layout, I'd probably put the town with a lumber or plywood mill and a fuel dealer on one side, and a log siding on the scenery side to supply the mill. Then you at least have a little on-layout operational possibility.

You might want an interchange track with another railway so your boxcars from the plywood mill and tankcars for the fuel dealer have somewhere to go.

The layout will only be half an oval. This will allow for a longer runaround, which I found was hard to fit on the layout when it was a fll oval. When I'm operating the layout, I'll have a cassete attached to one end which will act as an interchange, and when I just feel like running trains I'll replace it with a curved section which will complete the loop. Here is what I have planned curently:

Currently, I'm leaning towards putting a plywood mill as the main industry on the unsceniced side, as well as a team track. The spur on the sceniced side is still undecided,. Some ideas I have for it are a scrap yard, log loading area, mine, part of an explosives plant, or If I decided to go with an explosives plant on the other side, the loading area for a lumber mill.

but brittle.  If you glue the foam to the plywood with a foam friendly adhesive, the plywood will keep the foam from breaking and the foam will keep the plywood from bending.  The result will be a very solid but light weight layout.  If you will have any gullies or rivers in the foam that severely reduces the thickness of the foam, attach 1x3 or 1x2 lumber vertically to the plywood like an "L" girder where the plywood top becomes the top piece of the girder, and the plywood will be reinforced.  The key to keeping the layout from being wobbly is bracing underneath.  The triangle is one of the strongest shapes known to man.  If your metal legs are round, get an appropriate sized sheet metal clamp from the electrical conduit section of a hardware or home improvement store.  Install a block made of a 1x3 or 1x4 @ 6 inches long parrallel the edge of the table centered length wise the same distance from the edge as the legs.  Cut 1x4 lumber to go from the block to the legs diagonally, and attach the clamp around the legs and to the brace with a screw.  Then run a bolt through the other end of the brace and through the block in the center of the table.  If you have four legs braced with braces running from near the floor on the legs to the center of the table, it will not moveor wobble.  The possible problem with folding legs is that the braces are only about 6 inches long.  Making them 3 feet long strengthens the structure tremendously.