So I've been thinking of modeling a beer industry. Here's a rough scetch of my layout (3' x 5', definatly not drawn to scale ) - with the two main lines and the switches at 0", the one siding that goes on for a while goes up to a little under 3". The red line is the backdrop. The green lines are tunnel portals. The top half is a more natural look, with the bottom half being a sort of cityscape. now, where that long siding ends (near the +3), I was thinking of putting a brewry there, and having my Penn Rs-3 alco do the main of the work, with possibly a switcher working in the yard with the second mainline at its disposale (oh, yeah, this is a freelanced layout). what would be the best rolling stock to use? (boxcars? reefers? tankers? any/all? I dunno what the prototype uses). or better yet, if the brewry sounds foolish enough, any other industry's you can think of? (city-related, tho. No grain towers ) sorry about writing a book
A "beer factory" does require several type frt cars; covered hoppers for inbound shipments of malt, etc; boxcars for inbound shipments of cans & bottles; reefers or insulated box cars for outbound beer and perhaps open hoppers for inbound coal for the powerhouse. Another "city industry" would be a paint factory, receives inbound tank cars containing various chemicals and uses box cars both to receive inbound shipments of cans & boxes, and to ship out cases off paint cans.
Another "industry" that works great is a food processing company. I took a generic brick structure (DPM pieces) and made a building. Add a loading dock, a sign that says "Kraft Foods." Kraft gets box cars with cardboard boxes, machinery, parts, etc. They also receive tankers with corn syrup. (Small pipes on dock for unloading) They get covered hoppers of grain (again small piping to unload). Shipping is either boxcars of food or insulated boxcars or refers with frozen goods. Jeff Augsburg & Concord R.R. (a fictional shortline in Central Illinois) http://www.pegnsean.net/~revnjeff
You might try to see if you can find an issue of "More Railroads You Can Model" published by Kalmbach (the copy I have is copyright 1978). There is an article in it called "Milwaukee Road's Beer Line." There's probably everything you need to know about the kind of railroad you're wanting to build. I could probably send you scans of some of the pages if you're interested.
