PPG

The area I model Has a small Industry that was Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Only got a car or two. They got boxes and 2 bay covered hoppers for sand

1990s-ish era.

A lot of industries had stopped using rail service by then. You'd  probably find the best answer by looking at satellite photos of old Appalachian towns to see what survived. Back in the 1950's there would have been a lot more choices than by the 90's  I'd guess the most likely modern industry would be resource based such as a sand, gravel, cement producer? If the town is big enough it might have a lumber yard getting loads in or a beer distributor. Possibly a plastics fabricator of some type that gets plastic pellets in covered hoppers and molds them into something like garbage cans or whatever.  .....DaveB

Suggestions

One trick when space is limited is to model one part of the complex.  Many are smaller buildings away from the main complex.

Based on real world examples here in Arkansas and beyond:

1. Scrap yard. Gondolas 

2. Steel component shop. Takes delivery of coiled and sheet steel by rail.  Covered gondolas and steel coil cars.

3. Newspaper. Takes delivery of 60ft high cube boxcars, 1-2 per week.  Small warehouse separate from the main facility

4. Farm/Construction equipment sellers.  Flat cars.

5. Casket company. (No kidding, one in Fort Smith, Arkansas saw rail service until the late 1980s) Boxcars 

6. Lumber company/distributor. Center beam flat cars.  Boxcars. 

7. Natural building products (Cut stone, paver stones, etc.) Gondolas & boxcars

8. Plastic components.  Takes delivery of plastic pellets.  Four bay covered hoppers designed for plastic pellets.

9. Farm supply (fertilizer, feed, etc.)  Boxcars & grain hoppers. 

10. Food industry. Delivery of products like flour, sugar, corn syrup.  Modern air-slide covered hoppers.  Corn syrup tank cars. 

Joe

Asphalt

What about a small asphalt plant? I remember seeing that in a railroading magazine somewhere. Seemed like a good small industry, especially for your era.

Transload facility

In major cities a transload facility would be huge, but they also exist in smaller centres and may be no more than a siding with room for a forklift to maneuver between the tracks and a truck, e.g.

https://reload.arrow.ca/location/vermilion-bay-tfr/

What could be more 90's than a recycler?

The last reason to enter the B&O Georgetown Branch in the 1990 timeframe was to service a paper recycling facility about a mile from the Junction. We'd spot them empty boxcars and they would load them with scrap paper, tightly compressed/bundled. A certain amount of the paper ended up blowing around the general area; it was a messy business.

 

Thanks - got a few Google images!

Great tip to follow tracks around on Google maps. Came up with these industry examples: Adell Polymers in Petersburg, WV and Allegheny Hardwoods and Greer Lime in same town. All small enough to model on my layout. 

here is Allgheny Hardwoods, it didn't attach earlier

Welded steel products

G'day Shawnee,

By the 1990's ERW (Electrically Resistance Welded) steel products were coming into their own as a way of making pipes and structural beams in quantity. 

Inputs - steel coil for pipe, steel plate for structural shapes like I-beams, etc.  

Outputs - steel pipe of variable diameters or structural shapes like I and H steel beams. 

For steel pipes for gas pipelines, often these pipes would go to another plant for the application of internal and external linings  - Input steel pipes - output a different colour of the same sized pipes either loaded in gondolas or on flatcars with strakes fitted. Often the gondolas would be fitted with strakes to allow more pipes to be carried/wagon. 

In general terms for a small processor - The roof of the plant should be at least 4x as long as your longest product - 1x longest length as feed awaiting processing area / 1x longest length inbound to the combined roll-forming (for pipe only) welding unit (for both pipes and structurals) / actual length of the processor-welder unit/ 1x longest length outbound after welding/ 1 x longest length for inspection/packing.  

Having run a few shortlines

Having run a few shortlines as an engineer almost every one I worked for had a plastics plant ... some big some tiny. Usually they had a few or more storage tanks for the pellets but one I remember was only a large former ware house with just hoses out the side of the building and all storage inside out of sight. Another, one only had unloading hoses and then product was piped under a four lane street to the plant across the street. Another consistent short line customer is a lumber/building products distributor which brings in boxes of milled product and flats of lumber/drywall (usually center beams which require forklift access to each side of the car to unload evenly). A third customer would be a liquid processing/distributing company handling products in tank cars like lube oil, food additives, sweetners/oils, fertz.,ethanol etc. and finally all types of covered hoppers handling grain and other products, open top hoppers and gons handling aggregates/scrap metal etc.. More unusal but ocaasional are reefers of perishables, often frozen french fries or other temperature control commodities.

Just some industry ideas facilties which can be big or small. 

Barry

imagine...

Hi,

interesting question, also for me...

(background: according to my layout's story, it is a village located in the mountains beyond reach of a road... As such, I can afford to have even small plants rail-served... - in my case a musical-instrument factory and a speciality furniture shop, as well as a lively home-manufacturing outfit).

What I would imagine to be likely candidates for small rail-served businesses:

- printing of any kind, especially large-volume orders like catalogs

- a metal-shop doing some refinement for an offsite factory (e.g. boring motor blocks for an engine-manufacturer, surface-treatment for kitchen appliances, precision-grinding of machine-tool beds ...). Medium-volume of medium-sized parts. They come in, get machined, go out.

- a speciality paint shop doing custom body work for a larger car manufacturer or some such

- a shop that does assembly of some speciality product, e.g. A/C systems for reefer railcars, engines for small aircraft, gearboxes for machinery... Or an electronics component manufacturing plant.

- a wood-processor that does boxcar-sized assemblies, e.g. parts for a shipbuilder (what about the wood/composite floors of those rubber-boats?)

- ...

In any case, I would assume the factory would have been around for a very long time - they used to have rail-service back when, and have since been so essential to some off-site production process that they can afford to keep going...

More suggestions are always appreciated...

Have fun!

Industrial Bags

Back in the early seventies I worked as a summer student at a bag company in Montreal.  A small factory specializing in jute (burlap), mesh and polypropylene weave bags for farm products.  Printing presses for logo and cutting the bag blanks, long row of sewing machines for making the bag and balers for bundling.  Very much a manual operation.  

Material came in large rolls (think newsprint) as well as ink pails and baling wire/strapping.  There was a rail siding on the back wall and a truck bay on the front wall.  Most receiving / shipping was by truck, however CP delivered boxcars as required.  Mostly inbound material but I vaguely remember outbound loads for the Maritimes.  

Montreal West - Google Maps  K1 - Cif building adjacent to Chabrol Hotel.  Large building behind was a small CPR railyard.

6947 Rt. 138 - Google Maps  Street view

Bob

Back in the late 90s I worked

Back in the late 90s I worked at a temp job for a factory that made things like junctions for IVs and safety shields for some kind of surgical knife. I believe the plastic pellets came in covered hoppers while the finished products were shipped out by truck. The buildings were metal ones you could make using kits from Pikestuff and the plastic pellet tanks you could probably use the walthers kit. The company had a generic sounding name to it too. I've noticed for a lot of these smaller industries their traffic pattern is raw materials being shipped in by rail and finished products being hauled out by truck.  

Thank you all

I really appreciate the responses and input.  Just finding my footing again in the hobby, and your expert input is very helpful.  Thank you.

I have a Pikestuff kit that i think i will try my hand in "kit bashing" and matching it up to a older brick building. A small specialty plastics processor. Also will have a lumberyard. Both seem appropriate for my relatively Appalachian town.