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If you had to choose between a lumber yard or a company that made some sort of plastic product(s), which would you choose?
Thinking about cars in and out, I'm thinking the lumber yard would have a greater variety - centerbeam flats, boxes, bulkhead flats, while the plastics co. would likely only have covered hoppers for pellets.
Plastics would probably be easier to model though - a Pikestuff generic building and a couple of holding tanks / elevators for pellets.
Being that I worked in both industries, plastics would be more realistic, since a true lumber yard would eat up way too much real estate. I'm going to do both though but the lumber yard is going to be a smaller version. If you had the room hands down on lumber since you can do more of a scene with it, with plastics though you're right all you really got is centerflow hoppers, tanks/silos, and freight trucks for finished product.
Beachbum, I have to agree with Tomustang...you really got to consider space available with your layout....Walthers really wasn't over the top with their lumber industrial promotion. (can't remember the coin term they gave it...)...but holy cow, you didn't even take into consideration the raw products end of the industry...and depending on your era of model rring, you could include not only log flats, custom built like Walthers sells, but also the rrs that have taken regular flats and fabricated with log bunks. VTR in this neck of the woods has a few ole UP 60' utility flats, now custom built with log bunks to haul logs from NY to ME...and btw, again with the modeling era, UP, MILW and probably others used to use GONS for hauling logs too....furthermore, woodchips and "hogfuel" (bark mulch)are two byproducts of the logging industry, which would mean more trackage space...so really, a logging industry has the potential of eating SERIOUS space if you so desire....
Around here, most lumber yards aren't large enough to warrant rail traffic......at best they get an occasional car which is delivered to a local team track and then trucked the last few miles to the yard. Most lumber is trucked in since the volume of any one type of lumber is too small for rail. The only exception is one yard that has a truss plant....it gets rail service, but it's miles away from the rest of the yard and only really serves the truss plant. I see bulkhead,centerbeam and boxcars going in, but only empties coming out.
Consider that lumber retailers normally receive one or two cars monthly, some at their retail location, while others from a public carload delivery siding, nothing more than a spur in a dirt or cinder covered lot. Lumer distributers, those who supply many lumber retailers by truck, take delivery at their facilities daily. We used to drill a Home Depot warehouse, with 8 box car spots, plus a second lead that handled three or four flat cars or centerbeam cars. So lumber depends on how much space and what sort of facility you have in mind.
Plastics only require covered hopper loads of pellets, spotted on ordinary sidings, adjacent to buildings with or without external silos. Some plastic facilities are on leads where a truck drives up and transloads from the hopper to the truck. Generally, these facilities do not require frequent drills, perhaps twice per week, although, sometimes these drills can be quite extensive and time consuming.
Also depends on your era. At one time, every lumber yard of any size had at least one spur. Now, only the largest yards and distributors have rail delivery. The vast majority of lumber is transported and delivered by truck.
Plastic plants can have a lot more variety than covered hoppers. We have one in town that gets covered hoppers of plastic pellets but, because the plant also makes bottles and styrene sheet, it gets a couple of boxcars a week to carry out the finished product. It also gets a load or two of propane to fill the on-site tanks. Of course, just like a lumber yard, the more things the plant does, the more space you need for it.
Personally, I'm modeling a small town lumber distributor. The story is that it still has a rail connection because it's almost right on the main line and found it cheaper and easier to just stick with rail delivery.
I can't really give an idea for a plastics plant, as I have no experience.
However, I would think that a rail-served plastics plant would fit somewhat better near a large city than a rail-served lumber yard, which would probably work better out in the suburbs or a small town or something. Assuming, of course, that this was just to be a normal-sized industry and not the centerpiece of the layout, as there can always be exceptions.
Just my single cent. Would give two but for this dang recession
Wojo, MRLDave, you guys striked up an interesting question towards the original post.... are we talking about per say a production plant...or a wholesale/retail outlet?... as we all know there's a LOT of difference between the two! I was under the impression the guy was considering a bonafide lumber mill....raw products in, finished products out...even tho he omitted some particulars to the process...when he contrast between the two industries, that plastics would just mean a handful of covered hoppers.... that's when I figured he was on the production end of the discussion~~!! Having a transload center is piece of cake....single track with area big enuff for a few stacks of lumber and tractor trailer rigs waiting to be loaded....maybe a flatbed for local outlets...
The possibilities are endless, either for lumber or plastics industry modeling.
Most lumber production is either Canadian, Pacific Northwest or Southeast.
I am more familiar with the distribution end in the Northeast locally, carload deliveries are still made to larger retailers, although most receive their lumber at central locations and truck it to satelite lumber yards. Some receive adjacent to their facility, others from transloading locations. Lumber is what keeps Conrail (Shared Assets) Southern Secondary Track in business.
Plastics facilities range from fly by night operations operating out of transloading facilities and old low rent warehouse buildings, to manufacturing facilities complete with silos and piping. Plastic pellet cars are also delivered to manufacturing companies that otherwise receive and distribute their products by truck or piggyback. This includes a now closed Electrolux plant in Edison NJ that made air conditioners, but brought in plastic pellets in covered hoppers for the air conditioner's outer casing. A antifreeze factory in Freehold NJ would get plastic pellets in rail cars to make the bottles their anti-freeze was contained in. This plant actually used old CNJ covered Hoppers for silos.
Point of clarification - I meant a lumber dealer, either wholesale or retail, not a sawmill.
Within 5 miles of me are both a company that makes plastic bottle caps - pellets in via covered hoppers, product out in trucks, and two lumber dealers - one an 84 Lumber - which receive cb flats, bulkhead flats and boxes in, trucks out. The 84 isn't much bigger spacewise than a Home Depot or a Lowe's. Thanks!
Funny you mentioned 84 lumber, the local one with a siding gets maybe 12 loads a year, all in box cars. There is another equidistant from me that doesn't have a siding.
On my layout, I will have a small distributer/retailer that gets 2-3 cars per drill.
I also plan a plastics place, that is an old brick low rent building, if I ever get that far
Neither of the two industries will generate very much rail traffic, but both would be nice to have on the layout. Even a modern high tech sawmill doesn't have a lot of rail traffic. The very large one I worked at only had rail service to ship the chips to a papermill. Logs came in by truck; sawdust and bark left by truck, and the lumber left mostly by truck.
If you want a lot of traffic, you need to choose an industry that requires several types of raw materials. The busy ones are steel and the petro-chemical industries. They do not have to be big sprawling complexes. A steel fabrication or tooling plant could receive rolls of steel and send out plates (flatcars/gons) or metal parts/products shipped in box cars. An agro-chemical plant would receive many tankers of several different raw materials and ship the finished product by boxcar (bagged powder) or tanker (concentrate) to a finished product plant. A herbicide plant is an example.
NOTE: the two industries you selected can be as busy as you want...Who's counting.
I'm in the process of fine tuning a mid sixties branchline, with a bakery,and a paper box manufacturer requiring 4x per week drills, A lumber yard, plastics place and beer distributer with bi-weekly requirements, and a feed/fertilizer place and a team track with irregular requirements, all based on lines I worked in the '80s and 90s, but backdated. Oh yes, a commuter passenger service to liven things up. A steel fabrication plant that receives coils but trucks finished product would round out the mix, but all need small footprints due to limited space available. The layout occupies a space 10x15 so prime industrial sites are limited.
I'm in the process of fine tuning a mid sixties branchline, with a bakery,and a paper box manufacturer requiring 4x per week drills, A lumber yard, plastics place and beer distributer with bi-weekly requirements, and a feed/fertilizer place and a team track with irregular requirements, [...] The layout occupies a space 10x15 so prime industrial sites are limited.
My shelf has two spurs along the backdrop. One will have a generic steel building with loading doors (Walthers Bud's Trucking) for boxcars (beer, recycling, general warehouse, whatever); one foreground spur for a foodstuffs transload facility (tanks and covered hoppers) - a prototype is nearby; a short foreground spur for a precast concrete fabricator (cement hoppers, bulkhead flats with rebar); a couple more spurs for interchange / storage.
The second background spur is a toss-up between lumber and plastics. I'm leaning toward lumber so I can run centerbeam flats. I'll probably run enough hoppers elsewhere with the cement and transload spurs. Plastics might have to wait until I expand into an L-shape. I like that agro-chemical idea because I'm a tankcar freak...
I've got two lumber industries nearby on the old MoPac line. The family business lumber company has one spur that can accommodate a couple of centerbeam flats, but am not sure how often they get a new shipment. They share the spur with a building products wholesaler (who doesn't sell to the public), which can handle a couple more centerbeam flats, and they have drywall and other stuff come in.
Down the line is a local shipping point/warehouse for Home Depot. They get 3 or so centerbeams several times a week. From there, trucks pick up the lumber and deliver it to the local Home Depots. They also get their drywall there too.
I think the first point is pretty neat, since sometimes businesses share a common spur.
I did plastics, easy todo with pikestuff warehouse as mentioned. Boxcars and covered hoppers. Works great as a backdrop flat, but if you have more room then go with lumber, more interesting from scenic point of view.
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