you could have...

a lumber retail yard, cereal factory (Kelloggs), locomotive factory (EMD), cement plant, or a quarry, and thats all i can remember of the top of my head 

                              hope that helps

Clarification

I have a few questions to clarify your concept.

Your trackplan is a loop with a yard on the tail of a wye.

Your concept is the end of a subdivision, with a branch connecting to the next subdivision.   On your plan, what is the "subdivision", the "branch", the "next subdivision"?

How do you envision running trains?  How many trains?  Where will they originate, where will they terminate?

Do you have any staging or is the yard your staging?  If I ship a car from an industry in the orange box to Texas, where does it "leave" your layout?  If your yard is staging you might want to redesign it to support more staging.

If your switching yard is your staging yard, then you might want an industry that uses closed cars (boxcars, covered hoppers, tank cars) so that shuffling of loads in and out of open top cars wouldn't be required.

Since your railroad is freelanced, my question would be what kind of cars do you want to model?  If you don't like working with tank cars then pick an industry that minimizes their use.  If you really like reefers, then put in an industry that deals with perishables.  If you like shorty covered hoppers go for something with cement or sand.

Btw - while you are at it,

Btw - while you are at it, mirror your yard up/down  - so the single ended yard tracks gets switched from the curve  leading to the yard, not from a short stub ended switching lead.

Smile,
Stein

factory

I suggest you select a factory kit that looks good and will fill the space then decide later what it produces.  I once had a factory on a layout that accepted two empty boxcars and shipped two full ones every shift.  I had that layout for a year and never discovered what the factory produced but they were good customers so I didn't want to pry.

Art

How about...

...paper mill, furniture factory, book printer. If you want something other than a lumber related firm, steel mill, oil refinery, tank farm or foundry. A note on the steel mill, a fully integrated mill will not fit, but a mini-mill, coke works or blast furnace could. For reference on these, Nucor is a major mini-mill company, Erie Coke and Tonowanda Coke are small businesses, and there has been a few blast furnaces operating over the years without coke plants or other portions of the integrated type of mill.

Some more info..

Thank you guys so far on the ideas, some do have the chance on making it in to that spot.

Now I was asked these questions, so I will calify here and add some more info.  

My answers will be in bold...

I have a few questions to clarify your concept.

Your trackplan is a loop with a yard on the tail of a wye.

Your concept is the end of a subdivision, with a branch connecting to the next subdivision.   On your plan, what is the "subdivision", the "branch", the "next subdivision"?

​The yard in the plan is the division point between the two Subs, if you will.  divide the yard in half and that is where the one sub ends, and the other begins.  Now being that I do not have the room to go with 2 levels, the waterloo sub (which is featured more here) will just end up repeating back rather then end where is should in a yard at the end of this part of the line.

How do you envision running trains?  How many trains?  Where will they originate, where will they terminate?

There is to be a passenger car using RDC Budd cars, a couple of small freight trains, a train coming into the yard off the McWhirter Sub, and the train up in the Quarry.  Most of these trains will orginate out of the yard that is there now in the plan.  I would, if having the room, have done point to point with two yards-as you can tell that won't happen.  So again they will start and finish in the same yard

Do you have any staging or is the yard your staging?  If I ship a car from an industry in the orange box to Texas, where does it "leave" your layout?  If your yard is staging you might want to redesign it to support more staging.

​All my staging is in the yard in my plan, I would like to have perhaps hidden storage, but location is a factor.  All trains leave the yard that is in the plan.  How many more tracks should I include if expanding it?

If your switching yard is your staging yard, then you might want an industry that uses closed cars (boxcars, covered hoppers, tank cars) so that shuffling of loads in and out of open top cars wouldn't be required.

This was my thought too

Since your railroad is freelanced, my question would be what kind of cars do you want to model?  If you don't like working with tank cars then pick an industry that minimizes their use.  If you really like reefers, then put in an industry that deals with perishables.  If you like shorty covered hoppers go for something with cement or sand.

​Since they are modern cars, I am not fussy about what I will be running, as long as it current and runs on what radius I am using.  I have one industry that will be dealing with food/persihables, a small quarry, a salvage yard, a mine site, and a small retail lumber area.  So i will have tank cars and other cars too, covered hoppers for sand will be used in my quarry.

​I had thought about doing a locomotive plant too, but part of my current building will be doing the upgrading work on that, so I still have to fine tune that area.  The other option would be to use the storage yard are and increase it size and move the engine facility form the yard to the bigger area-i just wanted to keep an engine maint. facility in the yard.

If anyone has suggestions on moving some things around too, I am open to changes, since I have been working on this for a while now-the original had a transfer yard in it, but I already have two places that deal with transfers further up the line.

Design

"The yard in the plan is the division point between the two Subs, if you will. divide the yard in half and that is where the one sub ends, and the other begins. Now being that I do not have the room to go with 2 levels, the waterloo sub (which is featured more here) will just end up repeating back rather then end where is should in a yard at the end of this part of the line."

That's what had me confused.  A division point is a major switching location for through trains.   It is the major switching location on the division (which may include multiple subdivisions). If you are running between New York and Chicago, that's where you reblock through freights.

I don't think that's what you are doing, because you don't have the capacity for through freights (i.e. no staging)

I would suggest making it just a local yard that builds a few locals to operate on the branch, since that is exactly what you are doing.  No need to make it more complicated than it has to be.  

Stein is right flip the yard end for end.

There is to be a passenger car using RDC Budd cars, a couple of small freight trains, a train coming into the yard off the McWhirter Sub, and the train up in the Quarry. Most of these trains will orginate out of the yard that is there now in the plan. I would, if having the room, have done point to point with two yards-as you can tell that won't happen. So again they will start and finish in the same yard.

That's 4 freight trains.  Will the yard have the capacity to handle 8 trains (4 in, 4 out)?

If I was going to operate your layout I would put 2 or 3 staging tracks under the stairs behind the orange area.  I would then run trains out of staging to the yard, switch them up and run locals to the top branch Stairs around the top to the yard) and the bottom branch (bottom of the stairs to the yard)

One alternative would be to make the wye "generic", then run trains from the yard out the branch clockwise to the wye, turn and run counterclockwise back to the yard.

You could also view your layout as the end of a sub with two branches.  Option A would split the branches under the stairs and make one short one along the top of the room and a longer one around the bottom.  Option B would split the branches at the duck under, with one branch counterclockwise  around the top, under the stairs to the duckunder and the other clockwise from the wye to the duckunder.  The advantage with B is that you can remove the duckunder for normal operation.

Operation would be to have the yard build trains for both branches.

Another alternative would be to make the wye "generic", then run trains from the yard out the branch clockwise to the wye, turn and run counterclockwise back to the yard.

In any case your operators will send a lot of time ducking under and trying to reach their trains.  I don't know what that is in the upper left, but it will be a bear to switch and you could easily remove half of those crossovers.

If I was designing it, I would have put the yard on the main loop and on the other side of the loop put 4 hidden staging tracks (4 long double ended tracks behind a low backdrop)  I would have then looped on branch onto the area where the yard is now and then another 3/4 the way around the room.

Operation would be having trains come out of staging and set out and pick up in the yard then go to staging.  The yard would build a train to the branch where the yard is now and then a local up the long branch. and back.

You can of course do a locomotive rebuilding plant, but that's kinda far fetched.  Locomotive rebuilding plants are normally recycled major shops sold off by major railroads.  Why would a railroad have a major shop off an remote branch line?

Interesting

Hi Dave,

thanks for the info.  I am more of a visual person, so I am wondering if you, can show me what you mean for the hidden area.  I have thought about a hidden area in before, but the lack of room has somewhat prevented me.  As for flipping the yard, I assume that is to put the engine house up against the wall so the yard has more access? the yard is set right now so that when you are in front of it, the track from the right-has a train come in on the McWhirter Sub, and then drops off cars and picks up cars to head back on the McWhirter Sub.  The main part of the yard is the Waterloo Sub, so cars there get sorted and sent out along the Waterloo sub.  Most lines up here use the yard as a division point between two subs.  I would like to have the train go to its finial yard on the waterloo sub, but again space is the issue, and I would go two levels, I would just like to start and be able to finish the railway.  I did take a look at the plan and got rid of part of the wye, as it was just a waste of track.  as for the thing in the left top corner, that is my quarry area.  I did attach another plan that I was looking at going with...the yard needs work though 

"Flip yard" meant

"Flip yard" meant this:

 It gives you a long track (around the curve) to use when switching the single ended tracks of the yard, instead of just that short piece right above the Water Heater.

 Stein

Great

Okay now I get that part of it...easy enough.  Now to figure out how and were to fit hidden storage in