Picking Industries

[brubakes]

What made you pick the industries that you did on your layout? Was it purely what your prototype used or just want you wanted?

 

[jbaakko]

Mine, on my switching layout, are designed with use of rolling stock found on Cajon in mind (besides intermodal).

 

[IronBeltKen]

What made you pick the industries that you did on your layout?

A school field trip to a steel mill in Dearborn, MI, at age 9. Ignited a lifelong dream.

Was it purely what your prototype used or just want you wanted?

Proto-lance; whatever I can fit into my limited space. A steel mill modeled in HO scale in its entirety, would require a gymnasium!

 

[SpaceMouse]

Your era and location determine your industries...

but you can cheat...

jut be careful you don't go over the top.

 

[UP2CSX]

Mine were determined by the region and type of town I wanted to model. A small town in the deep south. I needed a feed mill for the farmers and a cotton processing plant. I decided to add a lock and key company because the town in located in an area that used to have steel mills so there was raw materials available for making locks and keys. My final industry is a paint factory because I happened to have a small industrial building and decals left over that made it into a paint factory by the process of elimination.

 

[HaggisKennedy]

On my current layout, it's the sort of buildings and other structures that I had to fit the available sidings and such. Since it's a proto-lance layout, there wasn't much specifics needed. Just whatever would fit in the building footprint that was available.

Diversity is always a problem, so I had to give some thought as to what else I could cram in there so I can use other kinds of rolling stock. A lot of it had to do with 'OK, I have these specialized cars I want to run, where are they going to go?'

Kennedy

 

[Bread&steel]

When I was a small boy I could see a foundry from my front windows. We lived on the third floor. I loved to watch the activity and about every few months fire would come out of the top of the cupola. It went on for hours and hours and into the night. I was fascinated

So now I have my own foundry on my layout.

Since I'm running a switching layout I needed more industries... I would plan nothing ! ...I would pick an area and pounder it for a long time before I decided what to do there, Sometimes it worked, sometimes it was just plain awful But I would just rip it out and started over again.

Larry

 

[Larry]

I had a lot of large buildings from former layouts I had built over the years.
So, I always have large layouts, so I started trying to match rolling stock to the industry. But, after I did that I found I had a lot of empty space on the layout, so, I just started cramming every available space w/buildings.
This new layout will have a lot of those buildings, but, since I have narrower tables, a lot of the buildings will be cut in half & I will use both pieces.
You name it & I probably have a building for that industry, except steel mills.

Larry C.

 

[JeffShultz]

What's on my prototype combined with "I want this..."

 

[Larry]

Jeff, What's on my layout, Plus, I want & need this. Sometimes our eyes get bigger than our layouts.

larry

 

[Rico]

There's a few reasons I went with a paper mill on my upper level:
A paper mill has the greatest variety of cars serving it. (second seems to be a sugar beet plant).
The short line I used to work for served a papermill at the end of some 60 miles of track.
I see alot of papermills on my travels with rail work, and they're varied in design.
A paper mill can stand on its own without a lot of other buildings nearby, meaning the upper level is (will be) mostly rock and trees without a lot of other buidings.
I have the Walthers Superior Paper kit, this thing is so huge I managed to build several background buildings out of it and have no space for anything else!

 

[HaggisKennedy]

I won a building on eBay last year, and when I got it, it was a lot bigger than I thought it would be. It replaced two buildings on my layout.

It's sort of overpowering, but I'm leaving it there for now....

This is probably one of the biggest limiting factors of a 4x8; the lack of real estate to have a decent-sized building without having it overshadow everything else.....

Kennedy