L&N Industrial Rail Spur

[FCIN]

Thanks every one for the happy birthday's :-) Gee time flys!

Ed, I would combine the candy producer and the food processor into one big industry like you mentioned earlier.

Justin;
Pretty unlikely that you'd have a candy company and a food processor/distributor as one industry. At least I've never run across any such facility and the two are in no way related.

I think it would help Ed's layout look more open, the only problem I can see with Ed's layout is that the industries are kinda bunched together at the end of the spur, part of this is that there are too many individual industries in a small space ...

As for the industries being bunched - well that's pretty much what you see on most industrial spurs. I could point you to numerous examples. Remember, approximately half of the left side of the layout is more or less staging and room to work the industries. There is nothing unusual about seeing an industrial spur with a lot of industries packed in to a small area - even in more open areas like you find in the midwest and west. As Larry pointed out, I made sure there was ample room to work all the industries on the spur without the need to do un-prototypical puzzle type moves to work an industry. Just for one of those Rule of Thumb things, if your industry spots 4 cars, then you'd better have room beyond the switch to hold more than double that number of cars and your motive power.

Of course, as I mentioned, it did feel like I was trying to include too much on the layout, mainly because of the limited number of inbound/outbound cars on a typical operating session. Thus the reason for another revision of the track plan. I did change the track on the layout yesterday and of course in the process, all my structure mockups became obsolete. Haven't had a chance to try operating it yet, but will do so later today and see how it works out.

(...) it looks like Bloomer’s blocks you view too much and takes away from the warehouse when viewed from behind Bloomers. It also seems like it is very difficult to see what’s spotted at Bloomers because of the finished height of the building.

Mark;
Didn't find that to be a problem at all. You could easily see what was at the warehouse over the chocolates plant and working it was no problem. The one thing that did bother me was the fact that you couldn't see what was on spot at the chocolates plant, unless you did stand at the end of the layout - which of course I can do.

My opinion of this shot is that this would make an awesome peninsula layout where you have access to three sides and could position yourself wherever you need to be to facilitate your switching.

No way to do that at all. Just isn't room to put any sort of peninsula on the layout. Had there been room, I would have come up with a plan that would have included such an arrangement.

Btw, How did you find it switching the industries? How did the uncoupling go with the building on the front of the layout?

It was never a problem to work either the chocolates plant or the warehouse in the original arrangement. The track at the chocolates plant was a bit further away from the structure then what you typically see (based on the prototype) and I could easily look over the top of the structure and uncouple the cars as needed.

Placing industries on both sides of the industrial lead, was thinking outside of the box and something that I wanted to experiment with on my layout. It sure gives you a more realistic arrangement of a typical industrial spur, but of course does prevent you from seeing what's on spot at those industries. That's really more of a display issue than an operating issue.

Well, I'll test out the new track plan as time permits and see how I like it. If it doesn't really suit, then I guess I'll be back to square one and come up with something else. I tend to like to try and duplicate actual track arrangements from some area then fit my industries to that track arrangement, so will have plenty of prototype locations to choose from.

Being able to lay out my track plans and actually operate it before committing myself to a plan that looks good on paper, but may not actually work right for real has really helped me with my planning. Also being able to actually operate the layout and have formal switching sessions is FUN!