I'm currently in the planning stages of building a small layout (32"x48") in N-scale. Anyone have suggestions on what industries I could use? The era is the 1970s and the setting is a small town or rural area in the Southeast US. I've already decided on a small Co-op with a few grain bins, but I need more than just one thing.
Feul oil for for heat and petroleum products for agriculture and automotive uses. Local grocery distributer. Building supply/hardware and farm implement dealer are two more that come to mind. Smalll wood frame Baptist Church tucked away in a corner with a couple of big trees and a small graveyard. And some of the older style DPM buildings for the towncenter.
Let's see. Auto dealer. Auto parts distributor. Local sawmill, which could be garage-sized. Electrical supply warehouse. Hmm, southeast. NASCAR racing shop? Tobacco barn. Dairy. Small brick yard. Machine shops of all sorts. I was gonna suggest a buggy factory, but that would be "regionalist," as I'm sure the southeast had cars by the 70s.:teeth: Poultry processing plant. Out of ideas for now.
Something like a team track or a train to truck transfer point doesn't take up much room at all and can offer a reason for a variety of cars. A team track with a small loading platform and room for a truck or two will serve for boxcars or flatcars, and all you need is a paved area next to a siding for transloading from either covered hoppers or tankcars to trucks.
I have a small layout (24" by 48") and have the following "industries": coal loading ramp, toy factory, grocery and beverage distributor, public warehouse, boat engine factory, oil fuel distributor, and freight house. Freight houses had fallen out of use by the 1970's and railroads had dropped LCL traffic by then. :cat:
Coolest local industry we have is a contract freight car repair shop. You can send any freight car in there for 'wheel work', carbody repair, repainting, etc. While some are specialized, all the ___X private owner cars and some shortlines make arrangements for private car repair shops to do their work. The one we have locally is actually pretty small as they go. Here's an aerial view of the site: http://www.terraserver.microsoft.com/image.aspx?T=1&S=10&Z=17&X=3244&Y=23167&W=1&qs=|Starbrick|PA| The big building is in two parts with two different roof colors. You can see cars parked all around the outside. The little paint shop is lower right (only big enough for one car) and the little office is on the other side of the road to the east. The 'main line' is on the south side and the tracks come in from the west. You can take a Walthers car repair shop and be close enough there. Bachmann made some usable buildings, too. It should be long enough to hold about 3 carlengths inside and be at least two tracks wide. LOTS of junkers around the outside, LOTS of scrap, trucks, piles and piles of stuff, etc. Locally ours has seen everything from auto racks to reefers to RBOX cars to DODX troop sleeper cars to tank flatcars... you name it. Also, if you like weathering and wrecked cars as loads, this is THE PLACE.
I'll second this one. And many team tracks, especially in small towns, might only have a dirt or gravel lot next to the loading/unloading platform. Paul
Southeast U.S. - don't forget packing sheds which can be as basic or as complicated as you want. Pulpwood loading, again just a simple siding for trucks or a complete yard with office, garage, etc. Earlier (up to the 50's) box making plants took flat cars, box cars loaded with wood "shook", and made the packing crates used in the fields and sheds. A simple chemical plant based on turpentine, stills, retorts,etc. Ready-mix concrete or block and pipe plants come to mind also, lots of those around here and until the 70's used lots of covered and open hoppers and gondolas. I am also modeling the southeast in the 1950's-60's and these industries are on tap for my HO scale layout.
Another suggestion is a small ship builder (100 foot class or less). They are scattered about the southeast. Tugboat and patrol boats are a good choice since these are popular plastic kits to center the scene. Lots of interesting detail can be modeled here such as modeling water and a ship building crane along with a ship being outfitted. Model power makes an excellent rendition of a gantry crane like you see in a small yard. Supplies like steel plate, fiberglass epoxy (in 55 gal drums), machinery (propulsion engines, gearboxes, generators, etc). are what you often see scattered around these yards. Standard and depressed center flat cars along with boxcars are what are normally used to ship the goods.
You could put a small industrial looking building that could recieve anything from Tank Cars to Coil Steel Cars to Plastic Pellet Hoppers to Box Cars. Kinda sounds morbid I guess but this is typical type traffioc in and out of the Batesville Casket Company near Manchester TN. ___________________________________________________ I was gonna suggest a buggy factory, but that would be "regionalist," as I'm sure the southeast had cars by the 70s.:teeth: Pete Nolan ____________________________________________________ Funny Pete. mg: Maybe no buggy factory but you could do a golf cart factory or a small boat (Like bass boat size) factory also. Since we had indoor plumbing in the south by the 70's, that does rule out an outhouse factory but you could maybe do a Port-A-Toilet company. :shade:
You want some ag/food industries. How about a flour mill? Get some Martha White or White Lilly pouch mixes & eat biscuits & cornbread & grits! Barns can have lots of tobacco. A farm may have horses. Grow some ponies for next year's Derby. How about a TN Pride/ Jimmy Dean's/ George Jones sausage factory? How about a Standard Candy co that makes GooGoo's? The Purity dairy makes their own yellow plastic milk cartons. The idea is to find names of products made in TN or other SE states. They don't have to be national brands. You do have room for a small Kroger store?
I'd suggest a large feed mill for the local poultry farms, about like what Tyson Foods and Pilgrim's Pride have. Ditto on the pulpwood yard- a single spur, shed, and a truck or two for hauling "pupwood" to the spur. On my abuliding layout, I'm planning on putting a paper mill, which takes up some space, but with the incoming materials (kaolin, woodchips, chemicals, pulpwood) and outbound paper in boxcars, you can fill up a layout bigtime. Another smaller industry could be a chipping yard- wood comes in by truck, woodchips leave by rail
As a kid, my town had a Solo Cup company factory. It had its own spur for receiving paper and cars would get loaded with product, cups, for outbounds. The structure was fairly modern for that time period. It would not be hard to protolance some kind of facility like that with a stock building such as the DP models factory. It was not a huge facility like the Kraft factory on the other side of town. Just make a sign for it and everyone will know what is produced there. One wonders what a Morton Salt packaging facility would have looked like. Or perhaps Elmers Glue bottling plant. If it's got a sign saying so, well that's what it is right? We also had a small fuel oil distributor that had a short spur coming off the main. They would recieve tankers of oil a couple times a week. Their tank farm was comprised of perhaps half a dozen medium size vertical tanks inside spill barriers. Something easily kitbashed or even scratch built. Interchange tracks are a great source for any kind of car.
My small Southeast town in the 70s had a tire factory, two textile plants, a small metal foundry, an exercise equipment manufacturer, a small collection of beverage bottler/distributors, a cement company making cisterns, a paving company, and a logistics company.
