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The Model Railroader's Guide to Industries Along the Tracks
Jeff Wilson provides model railroaders with an overview of North American mining, refining, and agricultural operations served by the railroads, and the specific techniques used to model them on a realistic layout of any scale. Numerous photos and illustrations show key structures, the sequence of operations, and details.
- GenresRailways
88 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2004
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Jeff Wilson
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 25, 2012
Because I wanted to create a couple of small industry spurs for my small layout, and because I don’t know much about rail industries at all, I thought it would be helpful to get a book about the industries. Kalmback/Model Railroader produce a 3-volume set called “Industries Along the Tracks,” and this one is volume 1. The book details the grain, coal, oil/gas, produce, automobile manufacture, and meat-packing industries. There are lots of great prototypical pictures, and he covers the full history of each industry, so you can figure out how the industry worked in your chosen era. This book is a good resource about the industries.
However, it has a major weakness, which is that only a tiny percentage of the space is devoted to suggestions as to how one could incorporate all of these historical industry details into a track layout. For example, Chapter 1, which is about the grain industry (and is the main one I wanted to read about) is 14 pages long and contains 28 pictures. Of these, only one tiny paragraph, or less than 1/6 of a page, discusses modeling possibilities, and only one figure shows a possible grain elevator layout. Considering the complexity of the industry, I found it disappointing that he did not talk more about how to model it, or provide some larger track plans including different aspects of the industry with suggestions on operations. The same is true of the other chapters. There is one overly simplistic diagram of a possible industry spur for each chapter, and a small paragraph or two about how to model the industry, but otherwise it is just a book about the real-world rail industries.
Although the chapters were interesting for someone who also likes history, I found the book rather unhelpful when it came to planning out my farmland/rural layout. The only thing I really learned was in the 1950s era it’s more realistic to use box cars for grain rather than hoppers, which hadn’t been pressed into wide service yet (they’d only just been invented).
Overall, too much of this book is devoted to aspects of the industry that could not be modeled (the interiors of coal mines, for example) and not enough is devoted to explaining how to translate the complex industry information onto the modeler’s layout. However, there is a wealth of good information here for those who are interested, and he does a good job of explaining it to modelers of any experience level. This book is one probably best borrowed from the library for a weekend rather than one in need of being owned, if one can find it at the library. It’s worth a read but it could have been far more useful.
However, it has a major weakness, which is that only a tiny percentage of the space is devoted to suggestions as to how one could incorporate all of these historical industry details into a track layout. For example, Chapter 1, which is about the grain industry (and is the main one I wanted to read about) is 14 pages long and contains 28 pictures. Of these, only one tiny paragraph, or less than 1/6 of a page, discusses modeling possibilities, and only one figure shows a possible grain elevator layout. Considering the complexity of the industry, I found it disappointing that he did not talk more about how to model it, or provide some larger track plans including different aspects of the industry with suggestions on operations. The same is true of the other chapters. There is one overly simplistic diagram of a possible industry spur for each chapter, and a small paragraph or two about how to model the industry, but otherwise it is just a book about the real-world rail industries.
Although the chapters were interesting for someone who also likes history, I found the book rather unhelpful when it came to planning out my farmland/rural layout. The only thing I really learned was in the 1950s era it’s more realistic to use box cars for grain rather than hoppers, which hadn’t been pressed into wide service yet (they’d only just been invented).
Overall, too much of this book is devoted to aspects of the industry that could not be modeled (the interiors of coal mines, for example) and not enough is devoted to explaining how to translate the complex industry information onto the modeler’s layout. However, there is a wealth of good information here for those who are interested, and he does a good job of explaining it to modelers of any experience level. This book is one probably best borrowed from the library for a weekend rather than one in need of being owned, if one can find it at the library. It’s worth a read but it could have been far more useful.
Displaying 1 of 1 review