Lots of great work from everyone. I think I’ve finally settled on a track plan and theme for my layout; I’ve kicked a lot around and it just hasn’t felt right, but I finally got a chance a few weekends ago with my wife and our pups to check out some of the new Swamp Rabbit Trail in Greenville. I’ll post the whole convoluted explanation of how, in my version of history, this area became what I’m depicting. However, let’s take a tour of me finally nailing down the layout.
First up is B&F roofing supply, which will now, instead of being right along the right of way, be a 90-degree spur from the main and across a road and include lumber as well. There will be two spots at a warehouse for shingles and other roof materials, and then there will be a lot with two centerbeam spots. The line behind is staging for the interchange and sessions start with the interchange train coming back to work the little industrial park. There is also a steel distributor represented by this line that will add some extra cars to move around.
This is the main heart of the industrial park. The back spur is a food distributor similar to the one Lance Mindheim models. This area is very close to I385 and makes sense for localized/regional distribution. The two middle tracks are the runaround, and the front is a freelanced team track that will have a single boxcar unloading shed like one in MR a while back. The G&N also uses it to store off spot plastic hoppers.
Finally, we have the end of the runaround and the plastic film plant. They receive in plastics of various grades, and each hopper must be put in the specific spot. Plastic films can have up to 7 different types of plastic in layers so it takes quite a lot of plastic types to make the variety of products; a lot of it comes in large boxes called gaylords, but some of the more frequently used plastics are bought in bulk in hoppers.
Overall it’s a lot of fun to run and gets a good mix of switching “on-the-line” at B&F, yard work to move cars around for the other industries, and industrial switching for the food distributor and plastic plant. Overall it should be a lot of fun and I can see the scenes a lot better already with this versus my other false starts.
