04-15-2010, 02:49 PM
MountainMan Wrote:Easy there tiger. Be nice now. Come to think of it, I know of many, many proto examples where the town developed around the harbor hence the harbor initially being at the center of the town.TrainNut Wrote:Is... 'cause I want one... a good enough reason?Sure - you can put it right in the middle of town.
Harbors are built to specifically serve certain industries, and vary enormously from place to place because of that. A fisheries harbor looks nothing like the automated jungle of a harbor serving the iron ore industry, or an oil loading port for example. Your first step is to decide what the purpose of your harbor is going to be, and then design it to meet that need.
As to the rest of your comments above... insightful and thought provoking. In thinking about the purpose of a harbor on my layout... that brings me back to my initial comment... Simply because I wanted one. Since me wanting it is the need and purpose, I can now go to step two and design it such that it makes me happy. Where it is to be located is not the problem (that's dictated by the space available)... rather as you pointed out, how I decided to integrate it into the rest of the layout is, and it is this that I have been learning a great deal about recently along with ALL the thoughts, comments and links provided in this thread.
In relation to what I want and the other industries present on my RR, I'm leaning towards two slips, one for a small cargo freighter, and the other for a tug with a barge. The cargo freighter will handle break bulk and limited containers brought in/out by the RR and trucks while the barge will bring in coal and ship out refuse.