whats your main industry

[tootnkumin]

Like this one?

NOW, you're talkin'

[JPIII]

"Plan A" is logging & a lumber mill. Those will take most of my disposable income for a year or 2. The lumber mill kit I want is of the "not cheep" variety. I have set aside room for it on the new layout. 2 or 3 of my 10 OZ bars are in peril.

[ThoroughBreed]

Grain would likely be the primary, followed by coal, automotive, and containers.

[Shoneburger]

Intermodal followed by Grain ( soybean & corn ) and Amtrak ... Hopefully one more .

[WCWBrassHat]

I have multiple main industries that are related. I have 7 coal mines and a steel mill. The coal mines ship to the steel mill, on line industries and off line industries. The steel mill receives coal from the coal mines, iron ore from off line, limestone from off line. The steel mill ships plate, sheet, wire, rod, bolts, nuts, and byproducts from the coke plant and blast furnace mostly to off line industries, but some on line shipments as well.

Glenn

[Iron Horseman]

I'm modeling the hot end of a steel mill. Blast furnace, BOF, slag pit, stuff like that. No way could I ever hope to fit a complete steel mill complex in a 25x25 garage!

I too expect a steel mill to be my main industry. The Minnequa CF&I plant in Pueblo Colorado specifically. I also have no illusions of doing anything in true scale as it would consume my entire layout space 90x60, but reduce each function to a track or two. I believe the real CF&I had 4 blast furnace towers so if I could get one in and just have a background with the others in the back ground would work. As a child I remember watching the carts of ore going up the "ramp" on the side and dumping the ore in. I want to animate that on my layout.

From the Bessemer Historical Society archives:

[trailrider]

One industry system sends coal to a 1950's coal-fired electric plant. Empties travel uphill from the mine via a hidden tunnel, coming out from behind the plant for return by the visible main line to the coal plant. Filled hoppers travel from the mine to the plant by the main line, and then are allowed to roll downhill to the mine via the tunnel.

Another industry is of shorter run, picking up cattle from a local stock pen in a rural area and taking them a relatively short distance to an Oscar Meyer meat packing plant. A refer icing plant is adjacent to the packing plant. "Processed" meat is shipped around the layout to a food distribution plant. The same rural area also produces sugar beets, which are loaded into open hoppers (generally 40 ft. in keeping with the mid-20th Century period. These are sent clear to "Denver", where they are unloaded by conveyor belt into a processing plant, which has tank cars and other type cars for carrying bulk processed sugar. This is generally taken to the large yard at "Galesburg", where it is theoretically held for shipment to "off-line" destinations. Empties are returned to the processing plant. Tank cars with petroleum are staged at the classification yard in Galesburg for shipment to a stub branch currently under construction on the "South" side of Denver. The source for the petroleum is also "off-line".
Galesburg also provides a passenger terminal which can handle local/commuter passenger traffic from a small town nearby, "Grashhook". But there are two stub tracks for handling various Zephyrs, or even Great Northern and Northern Pacific passenger trains (selective compression run rampant), which then take off around the layout to "Denver".

Hopefully, when time and my knowledge of the process increases, I hope to post photos. The layout is basically a 14' x 13' 7" layout in the shape of a reversed "G", with a folded dogbone configuration for continuous running where desired (for kids and non-modelers).

[OCN Guy]

Steel industries are great.

[railfan]

I too expect a steel mill to be my main industry. The Minnequa CF&I plant in Pueblo Colorado specifically.

I'm pretty sure we saw that steel mill in pueblo on our way to the royal gorge when my dad took us on our first trip to colorado in 1966. Is this mill still in opertion today? A steel mill out this far in the west is kind of interesting. Most folks think of steel being between pennsylvania and chicago......though there's no rule saying it must be.

I'll have whatever industry will fit in with this. This is not mine but a photo I found.......but this is what the middle of my empire might look like....with mountains and trestles and towns on additional platforms left and right....forming a U-shaped final layout.


mike

[UPBigBoy]

I'm pretty sure we saw that steel mill in pueblo on our way to the royal gorge when my dad took us on our first trip to colorado in 1966. Is this mill still in opertion today? A steel mill out this far in the west is kind of interesting. Most folks think of steel being between pennsylvania and chicago......though there's no rule saying it must be.

I'll have whatever industry will fit in with this. This is not mine but a photo I found.......but this is what the middle of my empire might look like....with mountains and trestles and towns on additional platforms left and right....forming a U-shaped final layout.


mike

That sure is a lot of track for a small area, looks like curved yards at the ends and smaller straight yards in the middle. Sure could make switching interesting though