L&N Industrial Rail Spur

[FCIN]

... I was just suggesting adding onto the Lowes spur because then you could run all sorts of cars into there: flat cars, bulkhead cars, center beam cars, all door box cars, box cars, cement cars, hoppers, etc. All off of one small spur. You could have one or two cars of various mixes rotating into the spur.The plus of this kind of spur is the variety of cars that can go in. The minus is that it only receives.

Mike;
A small or mid-size lumber dealer receiving all those types of cars would really be a stretch. Not that I'd be interested in modeling such a facility; but I'd sure like to see some examples of a building products outfit that receives all those products. If it were changed to be a team track or trans-load facility, then you could very well have a lot of different types of equipment unloaded there.

Double sliding door box cars and bulkhead flats would pretty much be it for what I'm modeling. No centerbeam flats, but all door box cars would be around in 1979-80. I don't have any all-door box cars, but I'd love to have a model of the Southern Railway All-Door box car.

For now, I want to avoid having a team track as such on the layout, even though one of my track plans does include one that would receive shipments of building products, and a covered hopper trans-load. But a small lumber dealer located on an industrial spur works just fine and is something you can find all over the country.

Your cocoa beans can also come in box cars. ...

Yep, in my modeled era, it might be more prototypical for most of the cocoa beans to be arriving in box cars. I do plan on modeling the dump pit for cocoa beans received in box cars, even though you would only be able to see it from the end of the layout. I needed a good destination for all the C113 covered hoppers I have so I'm probably stretching it a bit to have all the cocoa bean shipments in covered hoppers for my era. May have to re-think this industry and go back to a smaller facility that only receives corn syrup in tank cars and sugar in Airslide covered hoppers. But what to do with all the covered hoppers?

The Jif Peanut Butter plant in nearby Lexington, received all their peanuts in 100lb burlap bags loaded in box cars through the mid-80's. Most were actually unloaded at the W. T. Young Storage Co. warehouse (about two miles from the Jif plant) and then trucked to the plant after being inspected. But sometime in the late 80's, they gradually started receiving the peanuts in bulk in covered hoppers and now that's the only way they get them. Seems to be the same way with cocoa bean shipments - first all box car shipments, then as time went on, bulk in covered hoppers. It's one of those "correct for what era" situations that you run in to all the time.

Right now, nothing is set in stone on my layout, so it's still subject to change. I've really been wondering lately, if I'm trying to include too much on the layout so am having one of those inner-battles with myself about "how much is too much". I'd hate to end up retiring a lot of my cars, especially after changing all the wheel sets to the correct size metal ones and putting scale size couplers on them; but if it ends up that I don't need those cars on the final layout design, then so be it.