Need some ideas


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psychobeagle12

Member
So, if you guys remember I fried my ez command controller last year. Well, Bachmann was nice enough to fix it, free of charge!! Got it back today in perfect working order. Anyway, I spent the day at work looking at videos of model railroad operations, and long story short, I want to add at least two industries. I will upload my current track plan when I find it, but I am modelling PRR in the late 40s, early 50s timeframe. Any ideas on some good industries at this time? I have a freight depot and am planning a coal mine and possibly a pig farm, though I'm not sure on that yet (I have an unused siding next to my farm, any ideas for that area?) Any ideas, any at all, are greatly appreciated! Thank you!
 
Where is all that coal from the mine going to go?

One of the more interesting industries I am familiar with is General Housewares in Terre Haute, Indiana (google coordinates 39.488186,-87.390426). It used to be named Columbian Enameling and Stamping Co. a long time ago. And there is some real history there. Everyone always talked about a big strike the union had there back in the day and they had people with Tommy guns on top of the building keeping people out of the factory. They had their own steam boiler which was very cool. Every morning for years and years a steam whistle would blow at 6:00am. It was heard all over the Terre Haute area. They produced the speckled enamel ware you see in the stores called Graniteware. They used a lot of steel sheet from coils, and coal. They also used various things to make the enamel. So that one factory would use steel from a steel mill, coal from a coal mine (and maybe clay for the enamel). All the packaged ware went from the main building to the warehouse (far left) via conveyors, and sometimes large hand carts. I thought for sure I remembered seeing train tracks on the left side of the warehouse back then. But there doesn't appear that there was looking at the satellite view. Anyway, I was into model railroading when I worked there and I always thought it was a very interesting business with tons of history very worth modeling on a layout. And everyone has owned one of their Graniteware pans over the years (look at the catalog PDF file)...
http://www.columbianhp.com/top-menu/graniteware.html

And this is a very interesting read...
http://www.tribstar.com/history/x1155699386/Historical-Treasure-Don-t-take-it-for-granite/print
 
psychobeagle12 said:
I am modelling PRR in the late 40s, early 50s timeframe. Any ideas on some good industries at this time? I have a freight depot and am planning a coal mine and possibly a pig farm, though I'm not sure on that yet (I have an unused siding next to my farm, any ideas for that area?)
Click to expand...
Great time period - toward the end of the small time industries and right in the middle of massive rail based industrial complex. First a general comment, farms generally don't load directly onto the rail. There are stockyards, grain elevators, cold storage, and other "collection" sites where the farms take their merchandise to. Is this HO? If so BLI makes a Pennsy stock car. A stock yard can be squeezed into almost any space. Fuel companies take open hoppers, tanks, gondolas, and box cars. Of course there is the trusty team track where box and flats are just set out for people to come and pick up directly off the cars. Materials yard where they sell sand, gravel, cement, and other conglomerates. Lumber yards where in the 40s and 50s they were still using box cars and bulk head flats to transport rather than the I-beam things they have today. Autoparts distribution (NAPA warehouse)- double door & plug door box. Cold storage - reefers in and out. Packing plant - stock, box, flat, tank in, reefers, box, tanks out Plus all the associated internal shuffling for cleaning, icing, waste...
 
Thanks guys! I am more looking toward smaller industries, maybe rural type stuff since I am modelling woods and short rolling stock. I don't have a ton of space, I am on a 4x10 with a peninsula extension (once again, plans would help and I will upload them as soon as I find a copy. There actually is a copy on here somewhere, maybe I can find it...) But right now I have two empty tracks close to the freight depot and I would like to turn them into some kind of small industry track. As for the farm, I thought the same thing regarding direct loading of a train. I was thinking small stockyard, but I don't think my farm is big enough to justify it's own stockyard. I was definitely thinking lumber of some sort since I plan on adding a small sawmill (steam-powered I am thinking) to the peninsula. This will give me somewhere to offload some coal as well as the other industry, whenever I decide what to use! I may look at sending the lumber to the freight depot (at least some of it). Hmm, packing plant as in, meat plant? Could work... Good ideas thanks! BTW HO scale is used here, sorry I forgot to say!
 
I have been researching the industries I would like to use on my layout as well. Since it is a fictitious railroad I am kinda looking at kits that are interesting to decide what to use on my layout. I plan to scratch build as much as I can, but I also have some Cornerstone and DPM kits I plan to utilize. I am also using my experiences to help me decide. Like I may use the business I posted above because I worked there. I worked at a small produce plant that wrapped and distributed hands of bananas. They also had a farmers market across the street. There was a branch line behind there that fed a lot of small industries in that area. The produce place had a spur there was a recycling facility and further down the road a paper mill and railroad tie plant. Which to my surprise, I just looked at the map and all the places I remember with train activity are gone.

So anyway, a railroad tie plant may be kinda cool. It was a small business that always had stacks of railroad ties in various stages - logs, rough lumber, cut ties untreated, then treated ties. They always had a pile of square blocks cut off the ends of the ties. My dad would go load up a bunch and use in the fireplace in the wintertime. It was like firewood from heaven. They would stack perfectly in the truck and at home, they burned great, and I didn't have to help cut down trees and split wood ;)

Hope this helps.
 
Auto parts, textile mills, food processing, gravel, lumber, beer, Pyrex, glassware...lots of things to choose from.
 
How about a box factory? Have you considered looking at the various models available, and trying to utilize them for some thing appropriate? DPM's Cutting Scissors factory could be used for a lot of things. On my old layout, I used it as a school supply company(pens, papers, pencils, etc). Back in the period you modeled, there were often local or regional beverage/brewery companies that put out their products without large warehouse like buildings.
 
How about a Model Railroad Company like Woodland Scenics, Athearn, Walthers, etc. That would be really cool to model on a small layout.
 
Don't forget a freight station. These were critical in this time period. I grew up in rural Montana, and there were no interstate systems in that era and long haul trucking wasn't around yet, and small communities were dependent on the railroad and in a lot of cases the Railway Express Agency, the predecessor of UPS and FedEx for almost anything local businesses needed from clothing, food, appliances, tools and so forth. It was in most cases a money losing business for the railroad, but they did it to keep their rail customers.
 
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