TPBO

[FCIN]

Hi Ed,
I really like your mock ups of Munson’s Chocolates, especially the one with the vertical tanks, so I am voting for design number 1.

What I'm calling Munson's Chocolates is based on Bloomer Chocolates in Union City, CA. The mock up is just so-so, but based on what the actual facility looks like. Looking at the facility in Bing/Google aerial views and Google street view, I noticed that the rail siding was actually some distance away from the structure. I noticed that there is a loading dock that runs next to the track for about half the length of the structure that has a canopy over it that just barely extends out over the top edge of any cars spotted there, so I tried to capture that look.

Constructing it that way, made it a bit easier to couple/uncouple cars behind the building. My only concern has been that there is a good amount of piping and other potential details that need to be placed on part of the roof and I am just a tad worried that those details might get damaged under normal operations. Probably just need to make me a slightly longer uncoupling tool.

I really don't like or want to use the electro-magnet uncouplers. Main reason is that I intend to cut off the trip pins on my couplers. I use a simple uncoupling tool that I made up some years ago, that consists of just a piece of plastic tubing with a thin metal blade inserted and glued in to one end. Works like a charm. Would be easy enough to make a longer one.

For whatever it's worth, most all my structures/industries are based on actual facilities found around the country, but I try to pick names for them that are more likely to be found in my part of the country and that have interesting logos that I can get off the Internet. Durkee Foods/Superior Meats is modeled after the Family & Son food processor and Northwestern Meats facilities in Miami, FL, although a mirror image. The warehouse will be just your typical warehouse structure that you see all over the country, just have to decide what sort of material it will be - sheet metal, precast concrete or concrete block.

It might change if we get to see your mock-ups of design #2, but I kind of doubt it as I have seen enough unimpressive team tracks to turn me off of them. I keep going back to your pictures to study them and there is something about your design and execution that just looks right. I can really visualize what you are trying to accomplish and it looks great to my eye.

I started trying to come up with a mock up for the proposed Peerless Confections structure and realized that for the most part, it would just be a shorter version of the Munsons facility with perhaps a truck dock on one end and it really just didn't "do it" for me. Lowes Lumber or a similar building products distributor seems to fit better in that location, as most of these facilities that receive shipments by rail, tend to just have a large concrete pad and sometimes a concrete dock that is out in the open away from the main structure. Putting a chain link fence and gate around that track, along with stacks of lumber, etc. should be good enough for that facility.

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've really been trying to avoid the common place team track/trans-load track on my layout and after thinking things over some more, I'm probably just going to stay with plan version No. 1. Although, as Larry pointed out, team tracks/trans-load tracks/distribution centers are very common and widely used these days, they aren't very common on industrial spurs. You do find them located in industrial areas, but they are often rather large facilities that handle a lot of bulk traffic and often have several tracks as opposed to just a single track as GEC stated, and many of them would make a complete layout in themselves.

So I guess we'll stick with plan version no. 1 (no team/trans-load track). Just looks more like an industrial spur to me, when you have structures on both sides of the lead/main track. Might be a little tricky to work at times, but at this point it hasn't proved to be a problem other than it bothers me a little that you can't see the cars on spot behind that one structure. Guess that's no different then driving down a street in an industrial park and not seeing what is spotted behind the X-Y-Z company's building.