L&N Industrial Rail Spur

[shortliner]

I think what happens is that whenever we see a neat industrial spur or a neat picture, we try to see how that would fit into our space and that leads to a new track-plan, but then a few days later something else captures our imagination and that leads to another track-plan.]

Very true and a disease that probably effects a lot of us. One thing that I've had to wrestle with is finding suitable industries that would support my freight car fleet and then having the room to include such industries on the plan. Then of course you'll have this or that industry in mind and suddenly you see something else that is even more interesting to you and you're off in another direction. I have come to the realization, that I may well just have to mothball some of my cars if I can't find suitable and believable industries for them. Maybe that will help a little with the planning phaserealize that the entire layout is only 9 feet in length.

Ed - this struck me, particularly the last bit, as Serendipity - due to the fact that today I was reading Lances latest blog for January 11th What particularly struck me was the following quote,
[quote}
When I started out modeling the Miami industrial scene, I rather naively set the year as "Today". Reality has set in. It's just not practical to do so. Things change much faster than anybody can build models to reflect such changes. To be accurate you would be in a situation where you are constantly re-building structures and changing rolling stock. Industrial tenants come and go. Industries that saw rail service give it up. In other locations new tenants move into vacant buildings and start up rail service. Buildings in Miami are constantly repainted. CSX has phased in it's new locomotive paint style. I just can't say I'm modeling the present and keep up. For that reason I'm setting the date I'm modeling as 2007. In 2007 the Miami Produce Market still received cars in their courtyard. In 2007 the Seaboard Warehouse was still going strong. I will fudge a bit though. A number of new industries have started taking rail shipments and I'm not above adding those into the layout.[unquote}

This gives an ideal opportunity to run anything we like - all we need to do is change trhe date! If we simply decide that our railroad exists in a 10-15 year period, Industries come and go, change their operating practices, newer industries take over shipping different items, and need different cars to move their inbound/outbound traffic. They may ship in by rail, and out by truck or vice versa – so mothballing, and replacing, part of your fleet will be quite prototypical. You can have two versions of an industry building, painted differently, perhaps with tanks or silos in one version and with different signs. Run one version for a month [or until you feel the need for a change} and then change your year of operation. Your operating company may have bought/hired/leased a new loco too. It expands the entire concept of the layout.This gives an ideal opportunity to run anything we like - all we need to do is change trhe date! If we simply decide that our railroad exists in a 10-15 year period, Industries come and go, change their operating practices, newer industries take over shipping different items, and need different cars to move their inbound/outbound traffic. They may ship in by rail, and out by truck or vice versa – so mothballing, and replacing, part of your fleet will be quite prototypical. You can have two versions of an industry building, painted differently, perhaps with tanks or silos in one version and with different signs. Run one version for a month [or until you feel the need for a change} and then change your year of operation. Your operating company may have bought/hired/leased a new loco too. It expands the entire concept of the layout.