Southern Pacific Switching Layout

[Green_Elite_Cab]

Actually, there were more rail served industries in industrial parks in the 70's and 80's then there are now. You can find examples all over the country where a rail spur serves an industrial area, but most of the customers have either closed or no longer ship/receive by rail. And yes, there were more branch lines that had industries scattered along them then there are today, but lines being abandoned or sold to short lines that couldn't build a traffic base have killed off a lot of them. I know of many such examples around this part of the country.

Industrial Parks as we've come to know them, started appearing all over the country in the early to mid 60's. Unfortunately, since then, many businesses have folded or stopped using rail service, so it's very common to see industrial lines that have a lot of unused tracks and structures on them. This in one reason, I prefer to base my layout in the late 70's to early 80's. Not only was it a more colorful era, there were more railroads too, which equates to more variety on your layout.


You can find examples like this all over the country. Didn't mean to hijack the thread, but thought it might give you some ideas and examples for a theme and era to model. Going backward in time equals more rail served industries - going forward equals less.

I was just browsing around on Historic Aerials, and I think I saw what you meant before i read it. My local area doesn't seem to follow this trend, but others did. I had falsely assumed it was like this everywhere. Industrial parks are not really prominently pictured or mentioned in most of my books (or at the very least, they are not pointed out).