I'm starting to formalize my thinking about industries that are served by this railroad. I've been kicking around lots of ideas in my head and I'm going to start writing them down to see how they look on paper (so to speak).
Since I'm working with current era I don't get to do some of the cool stuff the old terminal railroads used to do. Freight houses, team tracks (at least not as much) and the like. Most modern rail traffic is bulk goods, which really doesn't translate very well to a small railroad like mine. That is to say, no Coal Drags weaving their way through my yards.
My first industry and one that I've been thinking about having on every railroad I've conceived of during this process is a plastics plant receiving 64' plastic pellet hoppers. This is based on an industry that is north of my real railroad serviced by the Kansas City Southern, on their Grandview spur. Frontier Bag, which produces plastic shopping style bags. They get switched one or two times a week from KCS' main line running through Grandview. They probably have 7 or 8 hoppers next to their building and another 5 or 6 on a siding on the other side of MO150 hwy. They just streach a hose out to them and unload them that way.
I like that kind of industry, 'cuse depending on how fast they go through their pellet cars, it could generate a lot of traffic. I specifically decided on 20" minimum radius curves instead of 18, to try to accommodate the larger cars. (64' or just shy of 9 inches scale). As a side note I really have no idea if 20" is too tight or not for a 64 foot car, but I'll do some tests to find out. I've seen different opinions online. My "main line" radius is 24 inches with easements, but once they enter switching territory it goes down to 20. I may find once I start building that it's too tight to provide satisfying operation, and I'll have to rethink my whole scheme.
So anyway, an industry that receives plastic pellets in hoppers. I decided to take a step further and in my fictional history say that this industry, soon to be dubbed "Parks Polymer & Plastics" or P3, is a major customer of the Parks Harbor Industrial, and has been for some time. Lobbying to keep the car float operation going when it was fallen on hard times in the 80's. Parks as a family has been in my ficional east coast area for many years, and the harbor might just be named for the same family as now owns the plastics plant.
I also decided to expand the operation into more than just plastic pellets. The Parks plant occupies a significant portion of the south end of the railroad switching operations, they receive loads of plastic pellets, as well as tank cars of various chemicals, they also receive empty box cars for shipping out their finished products. I really have no idea how realistic that all is, but it sounds good in my head, and it gives me a verity of freight to switch with just one industry. There won't be much of the plant itself actually modeled (and buildings will probably come late in the process anyway.) but I do have my eye on one big Walthers model that can be the center piece of the rail operation anyway.
On the current plan it has a 4 track rail load/unload operation. One track for plastic pellet unloading, two short tracks for chemical unloading, and one track that runs into the building for out going product in box cars.
The layout of the rail ops for the plant fit nicely in to the curve at the base of the "L" of my layout that connects the carfloat yard with the switching area, and it gives me a big industry to switch and generate a lot of traffic. I'm still tweeking, but so far I like the way it's setting up.
So that's one industry. Now to think of some other modern industries that get one or two car loads at a time and would be in such a close industrial area.
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