08-04-2014, 03:13 PM
Another thing that strikes me is that your industry designations are very generic. You call them manufacturer, distributor, warehouse, and such, which doesn't say much. One of my hobby horses, which people here are all too aware of, is that there's less and less boxcar traffic -- 10-20% overall, though it depends on the region and industry involved. But switching a "boxcar" to a "warehouse" is no longer all that common, especially the multi-story curtain wall design from the 1920s or whenever. The photos of your layout progress show a Railbox, a corn syrup car, and a covered hopper often used for grain or barley. Neither the corn syrup car nor a grain car would go to a "warehouse", although a corn syrup car would go to a certain type of distributor, though not a brick background flat. So I would commend the idea of researching actual industries in the Railbox-Trinity covered hopper era that commonly use such cars and maybe think less of the "usual suspects".