The best industries to use

Some basic principles:

• If you know what kind of railroading you like, don't lose focus. For a logging railroad, you'll want logging camps and sawmills; don't waste your space on steel mills. If a coal hauler is your ideal, skip the automobile factory.
• Even if your railroad's business is 95% one commodity (like coal), allow for some other types of traffic, or boredom may set in.
• You get more interesting operation if one of your industries feeds another. Grain hoppers from a grain elevator can be shipped to a flour mill, and boxcars of bagged flour from the mill can be forwarded to a bakery.
• On the other hand, if your industries don't feed each other, you'll have more overall traffic for the same number of industries.
• One big industry can give the same operating pleasure as several smaller ones, and will look more realistic.
• But don't hesitate to use a small industry if a big one won't fit.

1. Interchange track — the ultimate "industry," you can put any kind of car at all as an inbound or outbound, empty or load. A small layout can have no industries except two interchange tracks serving two other railroads, and be both busy and realistic, serving as a bridge line.
2. Car float or car ferry — these take a little more modeling than an interchange track, but give the same variety in car loadings, plus the operating challenge of getting the cars on and off without messing up the boat's schedule.
3. Car cleaning facility — almost every car needs to be cleaned out sometime. Boxcars get swept out outside; tank cars and covered hoppers get more elaborate treatment indoors. (And if you want to be sneaky, a busy car-cleaning shop is a good justification for those unweathered cars on your layout...)
4. Car repair shop — the Class 1 roads maintain huge shops for their own cars. But small car-repair shops will take any private-owner car, from beercan tank cars to auto racks.
5. Rip track — the yard track used for light car repairs will be busy every day. This is another "industry" where any car type will be appropriate, and it needs no more scenery than one track with tools and rusty parts scattered nearby.
6. Team track — any boxcar or reefer can be spotted here. Add a loading dock and crane, and you can bring in flatcars and gondolas. A team track in California has an unloading ramp for auto racks; they drop off truck chassis to be driven to the motor-home factory a few blocks away.
7. Brewery — grain cars (big covered hoppers or grain-loading boxcars) and tank cars in, reefers or food-loading boxcars out, plus loads of coal or oil for the boiler house, and occasional gondolas full of broken glass to the recycler.
8. Chemical plant — covered hoppers, tank cars and boxcars in and/or out. Plastics factories and pharmaceutical plants have similar traffic.
9. Meat packing plant — stock cars go in; reefers of meat, boxcars of hides, and tank cars of by-products come out.
10. Flour mill — grain cars (hoppers or boxcars) in, Airslide hoppers and food-loading boxcars out.
11. Steel mill — they bring in hoppers of coal, coke, iron ore and limestone, and ship out gons of coiled steel, flatcars of girders, and hoppers of slag. Not to mention the hot-metal cars and similar traffic within the mill.
12. Auto factory — going in, you get boxcars of all sizes, gondolas of coiled steel, and tank cars of lubricants and gasoline. Going out, you get, well, cars. And the odd tank car full of waste oil.
13. Paper mill — loads going in include bulkhead flats of pulpwood, wood-chip cars, assorted tank cars full of chemicals, and kaolin in tank cars, covered hoppers, or special boxcars. Boxcars of rolled paper go out.
14. Every big industry, regardless of what it makes, will need an occasional flatcar of heavy machinery, to replace something that breaks or wears out.
15. Engine facility — you probably already have a roundhouse or engine house, so get some more mileage out of them as industries. Bring in coal or fuel oil, and remove ashes, in the steam era. Diesels need diesel fuel. Sand for the sandhouse is always needed. And how about an occasional boxcar of paint cans, lubricants, or parts for the shop?
16. If strict prototypicality isn't your thing, how about an industry whose product isn't inherently obvious? Call it something like Vaig Enterprises (Art Curren thought of that one) or Unser-10 Industries. If the name and building type don't specify a particular type of loads, you can spot anything there, inbound or outbound. The ultimate example would be Acme Industries — "Proudly supplying Wile E. Coyote since 1942!" That factory can take anything from iron ore to rocket fuel.
17. Consider running a track behind some buildings (and behind your backdrop) to an "industrial park" that isn't there. You now have a sort of staging track, just for freight cars, that can justifiably ship and receive any car type.

• When the tracks run inside a building, I think it looks more interesting. It will certainly cause guests to take an extra moment to peek inside, and it saves space, too.
• A big industry needs several locations for spotting cars, whether on one spur, parallel spurs, or on tracks that diverge. Why fill up your layout with big buildings that take only one car at a time?
• In a similar vein, you'll get more fun switching if several industries are on the same spur.
• Consider "micro-industries" that take up little or no space. A coal loader need be no fancier than a truck dump on a hill next to a spur. To unload a hopper (covered or open), you just need a hole between the rails, with a conveyor underneath. One bottling plant unloads tank cars of sweetener with just a pump and pumphouse beside a spur; the plant itself is hundreds of feet away, and need not be modeled at all.
• Remember, a very big industry can take up very little space if it's just a flat against your backdrop.

"Humorous" industry names

Funny industry names have been around at least as long as Frank Ellison's Delta Lines. (Who remembers Carter's Little River Mills?) The ackowledged master of these names was Art Curren, who published a list that included gems like Pasture-Prime Beef and the Justin Case Hand Tool Co. (See the June 1976 Railroad Model Craftsman.) I've come up with my own list, which is published in the hope that someone will use a few of these names on his/her own layout, or at least get a chuckle.

And a few grain elevators:

• Capital Grains
• Erich Wolfgang Gold Corn
• Ilgotton Grains
• M. Burr Wayza Grain
• Nopaino Grain

How to show off your layout

How do you get people to appreciate your layout? Other model railroaders may notice your kitbashed factory or your skill at pulling off a saw-by meet. But what about the non-railroaders, the visiting family members, the guests who want to see your trains? How do you get them interested? Here are a few tested crowd-pleasers, which can also apply to open-house night at club layouts:

1. This should go without saying, but make sure the rails and engine wheels are clean, and don't use any brand-new equipment when you're putting on a show. Double-check your track for loose ballast, out-of-gauge switch points, scenery too close to the rails, and anything else that gives Murphy's Law an advantage.
2. Give them what they want. When Joe Public thinks of a train, he probably imagines a steam engine pulling mixed freight cars, with a red caboose on the end. So run a steam engine with a mixed freight behind it, even if your layout is set in the 80's and runs mostly unit trains. If you don't have a steamer, then borrow one. Make the train colorful, too.
3. Keep the trains running. If you have double track, run two trains, preferably in opposite directions. With single track, keep one train running continuously and keep a second one moving from siding to siding. And change which trains are running every 5-10 minutes, so the public doesn't get bored. Rotate your turntable; do some switching; do anything, as long as it moves.
4. Make your layout accessible. That means sturdy footstools for kids and vertically-challenged adults. That means people can get close enough to the layout to see some details. That means you don't get so wrapped up in running trains that you can't answer questions from people. And if you can provide some junk freight cars for the small kids to get their hands on, so much the better.
5. Don't be afraid to use attention-getters. Run a Tootsie-roll tank car or a bobbing-giraffe stock car if you have one. Pass out copies of a "Where's Waldo"-style set of questions about details on your layout, thus drawing attention where you want it.
6. Remember, the average layout-viewer can't tell the difference between a C-420 and a C30-7, and doesn't care to learn. Don't expect them to appreciate the fine points of the hobby. Just put on a good show, and they'll think nice thoughts about model railroading when they leave.

Strict adherence to prototype?

• Steam engine in modern times: one word — fantrips!
• Motive power not from your area (a B&M diesel on a BN layout): your railroad is leasing it, or bought it and hasn't repainted it yet.
• Passenger diesel pulling a freight train: it has been re-geared for freight service.
• Freight engine pulling a passenger train: your railroad is having a motive-power shortage.
• Shiny, unweathered equipment: see "Car-cleaning facility" in the Industries section of this page.
• Too much rolling stock just sitting in your yard: the cars are destined for another railroad, which is at a standstill due to labor unrest.
• Electric locomotive like a GG1 and no overhead wires: it's the Emperor's New Catenary. You mean you can't see it? (One modeler put up all the catenary masts but didn't string any wire, achieving a nice balance between realism and sanity.)