A backside view of some structures on my LAJ layout. Although no longer rail-served, it’s clear they were at some point.
The end game for most prototype and proto freelance modelers is to try to capture the essence of a place in miniature. A major part of that quest is the elements we ultimately select. Equally important, and less obvious, are those we choose to pass on. The element selection decisions we make will determine if we feel like we’re “there” when we look at our layouts. Only you can decide if you’ve hit the mark or not.
It’s pretty tricky. Even if we only select structures that actually exist, we can still subconsciously fall into cherry-picking and end up with something that looks contrived.
Cherry-picking being defined as selecting only the “cool stuff” or only incorporating structures that have spurs.
Case in point…. ongoing, viable industries that no longer take rail service. The spur may be there but it’s clearly never going to be used again. The turnout may have been removed. Maybe the track is totally gone but you see the telltale signs of rail service via loading doors. It’s such a signature look of the modern world that including non-rail-served industries on your layout goes a long way toward improving plausibility.
This is one of several composition strategies that I discuss in my upcoming industry planning book which, fingers crossed, will be available in a week or so.
Having a “quick launch” during the early stages of layout construction goes a long way towards maintaining enthusiasm and morale. I had the bench work for The Downtown Spur completed in a few weeks. The foam base took several days. For the track, I spent a few days lightly gluing down some temporary Atlas code 83. I plopped down a few mockups and within a month I had my concept in front of me. At that point, I throttled back and spent the next 15 years working at a leisurely pace.
Pacing, how quickly (or slowly) things progress on our layouts, plays a more important role than you might think with respect to our hobby satisfaction.
At one extreme, and probably the most common, is where critical mass is never achieved and the project stagnates. Years are spent trying to find the perfect design. Then, bench work drags on and on. Very little track gets laid. Eventually, a person loses interest and becomes demoralized.
You don’t hear as much about the other extreme, working too quickly. If you whip through a project and declare it “mission accomplished” in record time you may run into a situation where the quality of the finished models isn’t as good as it could be (i.e. sloppy work). You’ve essentially worked yourself out of a job. This particularly relates to small and mid-sized layouts. You blast through like a marathon sprinter, pat yourself on the back for reaching the finish line, and then what? Seriously, what are you going to do now, just look at it? Speaking for myself, and what I’ve noticed with my friends, is that interest quickly fades once a layout is stick-a-fork-in-it “done”.
The sweet spot, the middle ground, is somewhere in the middle. Think of it as an aircraft on its journey. They go full thrust to get off the ground and then throttle back and “cruise”. Once you get twenty or thirty percent or so of the scenery and structures done, it’s time to slow down and savor the assembly process for the remainder of the “trip”. Take your time. Do your best work.
During the early stages, you want to get your bench work down relatively quickly. Don’t rush but take don’t take forever either. Same for the plywood sub-roadbed. Next, get at least enough track and wiring finished to do some back-and-forth running and switching. Whip up some mockups if you want to get a sense of how things will look. Mockups can be very effective at taking the “get ‘er done” pressure off. At that point, it’s time to take your foot off of the gas. The satisfaction from this hobby is the process itself. Take your time. Strive for high-quality and neatly executed work. It doesn’t need to be OCD, one square inch at a time, flawless but don’t rush and sloppily slap things together either. Enjoy the ride.
Thanks to Justin Schlottman for writing, “Hi Lance,
I wanted to share something in regards to your article about the main line having a car dropped to be unloaded. The East Penn Rail Road ( Former Norther Lancaster Railroad) has a customer where the unloading occurs on the main line as well. It’s a feed mill in Stevens, PA. Stevens Feed Mill Inc. The unloading pit is right on the main line. I’m not sure if they receive rail cars anymore but after seeing your article figured it may be worth pointing out”.
OMNI Transload in Miami’s Commerce Park Industrial zone next to the airport (several hundred yards west of runway 8R). Although it’s one structure, it’s broken down into individual spaces, each leased to a different tenant. In effect, each of those cars serves a different customer.(Thanks to “Mr. Miami”, Tolga Erbora for bringing this operation to my attention.)
Yesterday is gone. The wonder of the 1950s is now seven decades in the past. Let’s shed one last tear, stop staring in the rearview mirror, look at the road in front of us, and open our eyes to the amazing modeling opportunities modern railroading is presenting to us. From a design standpoint, we are decades overdue in terms of taking the time-worn, horrid, bowls of spaghetti of the past and putting them where they belong, in the memory book.
The diagram above shows the evolution of how railroads serve smaller customers. In earlier eras, small customers usually had their own spur. They now lease space in a logistics warehouse or send a truck to a team track to unload their product. From a modeling standpoint the “modern system” is easier to represent and allows you to insert more customers in a smaller amount of space.
If you asked most modelers if the number of rail-served industries has decreased, the overwhelming majority would say yes. That’s partly true but, if you look beneath the surface, a more accurate assessment would be that of change. Without question, the number of industries with their own spur has greatly diminished. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ve stopped getting rail service. In simple terms, what’s happened is that the railroads have said, let’s strike a middle ground here where we both benefit. We’ll still give you rail service. For it to work, we need to trim the infrastructure of those spider web spurs. If you will come to us, or a central location, you can still ship by rail. The nature of these smaller rail-served industries has changed, but the volume hasn’t decreased as much as you might think. And, therein lies an opportunity. Whether it fits for you will depend on how critical the old “building with a spur” in front is to you. What we have now is a system of team tracks, logistics warehouses, logistics compounds, and transload facilities.
Team track spurs often have a fairly generous length. This means they can serve a number of customers at once. Looking at the spur above, it’s clear that cars for two distinct customers are on the lead. On a different day, you’d also see centerbeams of lumber or hoppers of plastic pellets. Note that in modern times they’ve largely gotten away from loading platforms. Trucks just pull up next to the cars.
Here’s an aerial view of OMNI Transload in Commerce Park with an adjacent team track. On this day the team track had two tank cars and two scrap gons.
Logistics warehouses are the perfect industry for a model railroad. You get a lot of industries in a small amount of space. Common business renting space in them includes: lumber, frozen food, wine, and dry goods. They offer a lot of operational interest as well since an incoming cut of cars needs to be sorted and spotted in front of the correct customers.
The above design addresses today’s world, a world of efficiency. We only need two turnouts to serve what amounts to eight customers, six at OMNI and two on the team track spur. Operations are challenging, both in real life and for the modeler. Incoming cars need to be sorted correctly before spotting. The prototype would either do this in the yard ahead of time or use the “main” as a sorting track. Then, there’s the issue of the ever-present “problem” customer that GM’s complain about. The one that takes FOREVER to unload their car. Your train comes in with new cars but there’s always that one car in front of the warehouse that hasn’t been unloaded. This means you need to pull it, spot the incoming cars, and then put the problem customer’s car back.
A layout like this checks a lot of boxes:
-Plausible
-Operationally interesting
-Visually interesting
-Inexpensive and easy to build
It offers access to the hobby for anybody ranging from a motivated young student, a busy young person launching their career and starting a family, to a diehard “gray haired” prototype modeler like myself.
Let’s stop bitching about what once was and embrace the fascinating rail world that lies before us.
