Non-Agricultural Rural Industry Suggestions?

[FCIN]

For an interesting little short line serving a small town rural area, you might want to take a look at the now abandoned Union Railroad of Oregon http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/uo.html. The UO's main customer was a sawmill, but also served a grain elevator/feed mill and a couple of other small industries. It was certainly an interesting little operation and one that I had considered modeling at one time, although I don't know where I could have gotten hold of a good running scale size Plymouth loco in HO scale.

Some really good photos on the web site that might inspire you or at least give you some ideas. As for the kind of operations at such a facility in the current time period; probably wouldn't be a lot - but you'd be shipping out finished lumber in box cars or bulkhead and/or center beam flats; wood chips and like the UO some miscellaneous other commodities in and outbound. If they did produce plywood, you could probably justify them receiving glue in tank cars and of course ship out the finished product in box cars.

Here's a simplied drawing of the track arrangement of the UO that a person could base a small layout on:     Of course, even today, you'd probably have a team track located in a small rural town like you mention or even the truck terminal might make for an interesting operation. You could have box cars of various commodities, reefers of produce or meat; perhaps even box cars of beer now and then to keep the townfolk smiling.

Another possible industry that you might find in such an area would be an LP Gas distributor. Very simple to model and would add another interesting car type to your fleet.

Just some ideas that I hope you may find useful, but as Sumper250 says, the more modern, the less likely to have rail service in such a small town.