Beer Distributor - Ontario, CA

[Mike Kieran]

MM wrote:OTH, any modern layout is just a big box with doors and the same kind of cars lined up in a row.
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Actually that's not exactly true..A plastic company can receive covered hoppers of plastic pellets,tank cars loaded with plasticizer and boxcars for loading.. A scrap rubber reclaim company can receive boxcars of scrap rubber,tank cars of specialized oil and empty hopper cars for loading rubber pellets.A lumber yard can receive boxcars of roofing,siding,lumber,sinks,doors,tile and other home improvement items plus bulkhead flat cars of lumber and centerbeams.Bakeries can rececive covered hoppers,tankcars and few boxcars.

The list of single car shippers and receivers is endless..

As I mention before there's far more to modern railroads then most modelers think or been led to believe by so called "experts"..

While this is true about the rolling stock, modern factories/physical plants/buildings/warehouses are just big boxes with pretty much zero character.

Blame it on the Bauhaus school of architecture and company bean counters, but we no longer go to the trouble, effort and expense of creating industrial buildings that make a statement the way we used to do.

That's why I shy away from the modern era - the trains have to take on the total burden of catching and holding the viewer's attention, as the buildings for the most part lack any visual appeal whatsoever.

This is the modern Anheiser-Busch brewery here in Colorado - it could be anything, but it looks more like a cement works or a heavy industry than a brewery.


And here is an old brewery:

Isn't it Ironic that Germans were usually the architects who designed the old elaborate structures and then designed minimalist boxes. I believe that we can still design box structures to be visually interesting. We just have to add the details to them. Boxes, palettes, graffiti, guy's playing cards on a box, signs, etc. Add in rooftop details like refrigeration units, dust collectors, skylights, windows at the tops of the walls, and other assorted minutiae to break up the boxiness of the structure.

As far as a beer distributor, I would opt instead for a grocery distributor. That way you have a mix of box cars, RBLs, Reefers, as well as tank cars and covered hoppers (sometimes grocery store chains have their own brand that they package themselves).