Loads out

If you are modeling a industry that uses steel and other metal, do not forget to ship away metal shavings and cuttings back to the mill.

For aircraft parts, the trend to ship subassemblies (structural parts) are recent development and may not suit your era, however there are many aircraft parts that are small, such as engines piston engines for light aircraft, engine parts, instruments, radios, cabin parts (luggage bins, seats). For eletronics and instruments I suspect that any rail load would use shock proof cars. Modeling these industries also allow for extra traffic, since there are thousands of aircraft using lycoming engines and these are not just for new aircraft, but are used as replacement for worn out engines on older aircraft.

Regards,

Spots

One thing you have to consider is if you only have 3-5 spots for BOTH inbound and outbound, can the material be handled at the same spots.  For example, coil steel generally uses an overhead crane, but boxcars are loaded typically through a door or off a dock.  Can you come up with an arrangement where you have both a crane and a dock for the same spots?  Or will you have to separate your spots, 1-2 spots exclusively for gons and 2-3 spots for boxcars?   Which will achieve the look you want, one building with 3 boxcar spots or a building with 5 boxcar spots?

Another thing to consider is the size of the parts and the quantity of production.  Spark plugs are auto parts but don't require double doors.  Same with oil filters, O-rings, light bulbs, brake shoes, bearing and hinge assemblies, etc.  I worked in a plant that made aircraft parts.  They made seals for the brake cylinders for business jets, but that was about 1% of their total business, the rest was O-rings and seals for hydraulic systems.  Aircraft manufacturers will make fewer planes in a year than auto manufactures will make cars in a day.  So there is a level of scale.  For example, about 5000 F-4 Phantom jets were made over a 20 year span (less than 1 per day).  In 1960, the US made abut 8 million autos (21,000 a day).  An aircraft parts manufacturer might be a better fit for a smaller facility.

I assume you want to model the coil steel to get a mix of cars.  You can get the same amount of activity, switching, with one type of car, as you can with multiple types.  Its also possible to get the same types of cars to carry inbound stuff as outbound stuff.

Daniel and Dave many thanks...

...for the replies and precious info provided.

Daniel: Good call on the scrap loads on gondolas as a residual product to be shipped. I ll include these in the mix!

Dave: I got a spur which is something like 3-5ft long if you include the curved part coming off the turnout (away from the layout now in order to accurately measure). I have no problems to have a concrete dock as long as the spur length (and a factory structure as long as this) with the car spots, and have the overhead crane where it is required. I could have 3 spots for outbound product (50' boxcars) and 2-3 spots for inbound material (coils in gons etc...). Or i could have 5-6 spots being all dual-purpose. I am open to suggestions and would welcome any advice towards being more prototypical (ie dedicated spots vs dual-purpose).

With respect to the industry type, i am more than happy to hear that the aerospace parts mfg choice is a better one, since i suspected that numbers might match more easily (volume with outbound cars etc...), but as i said i was in the dark with respect to the rail-served part during the Vietnam era (i have read only about WW2 era rail ops with respect to aircraft industries).

I can consider any aero parts being manufactured on the plant as i said, from pylons/drop tanks (relatively high volume in order to have frequent loads in/out, come to think of it... drop tanks should be VERY high volume since they frequently got rid of them when they reached "downtown"), or parts that are even less-aircraft-type-specific like ejection seats, jet engine parts, etc. I could also consider avionics or other subsystems and of-course type-specific components like rudders, flaps, elevators, landing gear etc.... for  aircraft produced in my era (1968/70) like, A-7's , F-4's, A-6's.

Looking forward to hear your feedback on the car spots you mentioned Dave.

Thank you again

Yannis

Research Research Research

Sounds like you are wanting to stay pretty prototypical in regards to matching train cars with industries.  In that case, I would say your best bet is to research industries of that time.  

Many times railroad historical societies have documentation or better yet, members who switched a specific industry when working for the road. 

Photo searches can also reveal information.  Done that in the past where an old picture of an industry included parked train cars.  

I do know for appliances, the 40-foot hi-cube boxcar was designed for this industry.  But again, after you do research you may find the type of boxcars you have now were also used.  

"Good luck!"

Joe

Thank you Joe

I did some reading on similar industries in Los Angeles, to the one i want to make-up (fictional yet plausible), like Bendix and Garrett. Unfortunately no photos of parked rail-cars. Similar situation in my search for big aero factories like Hughes, Douglas etc... The search though provided great inspiration on how the buildings looked and how i should go about when i ll start scratchbuilding mine.

Update...

Ok i measured the spur, i can fit 6x 50' cars there. Since the track is not glued down i could add another turnout and have two parallel stub ended tracks but i ll loose on the available length.

appliance distributor

Thank you Scott!

Very useful information there. I was considering the distributor solution, but I am trying to avoid this as the "easiest" solution (for me), ie to have a distributor instead of a manufacturer and have an easier fleet to build for this. I also considered this for auto-parts (distributor) as well (meaning 50' cars). Having said that, the pool cars and the rebuilt 40' appliance cars will make an interesting (and easy to make up) fleet. I already had some plans for kitbashing/correcting some Walthers ATSF 40' appliance cars that had the wrong doors/roofs. The distributor option does help out economy-wise since i wont have to add gondolas in the mix. It might be also more appropriate for east Los Angeles, and save the manufacturing plant for a future module representing a more rural area east of Pasadena (say Azusa, where similar industries were present)

For the less-easy solution of the manufacturer though, I was thinking along the lines of having 2 spots for raw materials (sheet/coil/ingots...) and 4 spots for outbound, hypothesizing a clockwise production line (or even a straight line if i hypothesize that the line is L to R). I hope i am making sense with this. I am imagining a nice long manufacturing building with a saw-tooth roof.

What was there?

Silly question.

What industries were actually there?  Would it be easier to just find out what rail served industries were in the specific area you are modeling and then model those?

Some industries on the 2nd district

Good day Dave,

Here is a non-exhaustive list on the industry types (a few are not confirmed as being railserved). This excludes Los Angeles in order to make the list shorter. I based my industries on this list, going freelance though, not replicating the exact industries or their locations, and also introducing some new ones (printing house).

Pasadena Freight House

Fruit / Grocery distributors

Fruit-Citrus packing houses

Automobiles  & Auto Parts (dealers)

Aerospace Parts

General Merchandise (Consumer products)

Breweries & Wineries

Oil dealers

Crushed rock

Lumber

Building materials

Water Processing

Plastics

Food & Corn products

".is it plausible to have

  The Maywood furniture factory on the SP Santa Cruz branch got single cars of lumber in and single cars of furniture out for many years, at least from the 1950's thru the early 1970's. There were served every other day or so with 40 foot box cars in the 50's and maybe 50 foot cars in the later years. Up until a few years ago a lumber yard across the street from Maywood was getting single cars of lumber and other sheet products on a similar schedule. In the heyday of loose car railroading lots of inner city industries were served by short one or two car spurs due to tight quarters and price of land....DaveB 

Very interesting info DaveB!

Many thanks for providing this example. I suppose that having a lumber yard on the same district, would not mean that the furniture manufacturer could not get his lumber from elsewhere (Oregon, Canada etc...) instead of obtaining it locally.

Industries

When researching an area, a handy resource I like to use is Historicaerials.com.  I find a topo map in the era or year of interest, locate the railroad and then change over to an aerial photo.  I can "fly" over the line and look for industries, what still has track, what type of industries are they, are they still active.  That's a bit subjective but if you have a large facility with lots of track and there aren't any railcars anywhere, its a pretty good guess they aren't using rail.  If there are railcars, sometimes you can even pick out what type of cars they are.  If you are lucky, the buildings are still there today.  If that's the case I then go to Google Street View and look at the building from street level.

Good pointers!

I have been using the historic aerials in the last few years and it has helped tremendously in building the layout. My most important sources where/are SFRHMS, John Signor and his book on the LA division and the Warbonnet magazine. I ll re-examine the aerials/topographic maps as you said since i haven't examined it closely for spurs in several places, i focused mostly on the Pasadena area ( and I used what you said to understand the wineries industry in Cucamonga).

@Dave Husman, Great resource!

@Dave Husman,

Great resource! Never heard of it. Thanks for the link.

I "went over the tracks"...

...for the segment / location i am planning to place the potential industry as Dave Husman suggested! It seems (to me) that the area is not too suitable for heavy manufacturing (auto/aero parts). The only spurs (1-2) i found led to medium-largish buildings that do not inspire me as manufacturing (auto/aero/furniture) plants. Not that it is not doable...

It seems that the locale is more suitable for an appliances' distributor (if i want fancy and colorful hi-cubes and other 40' cars), or an auto-parts distributor, or a distributor in general...

For something completely different, I am also considering (given the traffic/car types/spots/size) a cannery of some sort (corn, peaches etc...). I am doubtful though if a cannery would be better placed in an urban-suburban setting such as my location in east LA rather than in a more rural setting closer to the producers of the product to be canned.

"I am doubtful though if a

Sometimes canneries ended up in urban areas ,as the city grew it grew around them. We had a cannery here in town till the 1990's, the product was trucked in using large open bins or box trailers .When I was a kid it was served by the SP with new GP9's and  40 foot boxcars and at the end 50 footers with the same GP9's rebuilt and old. Beer distributors also seemed to hold on to rail traffic longer than most businesses and don't require a lot of space to model.....DaveB

DaveB thanks!

What you say makes perfect sense about the cannery. Having said that, I did some further reading-research on the area of interest and the cannery option and i think i ll opt out of it. Most likely, if i want to stick strictly to the area east of a specific road bridge that i model, i ll opt for a distributor-type of business such as appliances. For some reason, even though i originally disliked the idea of hi-cube 40' cars, now i tend to favor using them.