CSX Deland Spur, FL

[FCIN]

(...) Looking around for another Florida location, I found a CSX branch off the Amtrak main line at Deland, FL approx 30 miles north of Orlando. The 3.5 mile branch serves a plastics facility which receives plastic pellets in covered hoppers.

Hi Mal.
Probably not much help here, but it looks like the location where that photo was taken http://maps.google.com/maps?q=DeLand,+FL...a&t=h&z=19 is a trans-load facility where pellet cars are being off-loaded to trucks at that small shed with the piping you can see in the photo. The large warehouse structure to the west is vacant and for lease. Plenty of pellet cars waiting to be unloaded and you can see a tank truck heading for the trans-load shed in that Google view.

At the end of the spur, there is a short run-around and an out of service spur that lead to a Suburban Propane facility. There is also some sort of warehouse that still has the track in place, but doesn't look used. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=DeLand,+FL...a&t=h&z=18

Further to the southwest http://maps.google.com/maps?q=DeLand,+FL...a&t=h&z=18 are two other tracks and (so far) unidentified facilities. The Google view shows more pellet type covered hoppers at the south building and it looks like there may be a pneumatic discharge pipe running parallel to that track; very typical for many plastics manufacturing plants. At the north building there is a 25-30,000 gal tank car and and what looks like a gravity discharge covered hopper (trough hatch) on that track. Bing Birds Eye views are pretty good for viewing these areas too and may give more hints as to what is going at those two facilities. Google Street view doesn't reveal any signs that would indicate the nature of either facility.

One possible industry that immediately comes to mind for that area would be a warehouse that ships out citrus (oranges/grapefruit) during the harvest season, especially if you like reefers. But a small distribution warehouse might be a better choice.

(...)I would, however, like to include a hopper unloading facility

When you say a hopper unloading facility, are you referring to the plastic pellet hoppers or some other type of hopper such as the phosphate hoppers you see in the Florida area?

One interesting thing about this branch. It appears that the CSX local that switches the branch, does so with a locomotive on each end of the train. An interesting operating concept.

As for the track plan, I'm not sure how I'd set things up and operate it other than treat it like the train had just arrived at the industrial area (staged on the main at the left side of the plan) and then work the industries as required and end the session with the locomotive on the opposite end of the outbound train. Since the plan is just 9 feet long, I'd guess that a typical train would only consist of 2 or 3 inbound cars.

I'm not real sure if you'd have enough room to work the industry on the right side of the plan, without resorting to switching puzzle type moves, unless you did like CSX and use two locomotives, which could then eliminate the need for a run around track.

Perhaps you could move the runaround to the right end of the plan, similar to the prototype and have the staging area on the left side - something like this very rough plan?     On this quick plan I threw together, I placed a pellet trans-load on the front edge of the plan and suggest locations for two other industries. You could probably split up the Walther's kits and use them for two different industries. The pellet trans-load could of course be used for some other commodity. As I said, this is a very rough plan based on your space. I'm sure you can come up with something that suits you better and not end up with a Timesaver track plan!

By the way, does your layout have to be located in Florida or just have a CSX theme? If it's just a CSX theme, there are plenty of other places to look for interesting layout themes.

P.S. - I really enjoy playing around with that AnyRail program. Find it to be quite accurate as far as the switch templates. But I hate those little white dots that indicate where track sections join. A nice little thin black line would do nicely.