Industrial park railroading has long been an area of interest to model railroaders. This type of railroading serves a concentrated group businesses, and it may or may not be affiliated with a class one railroad. Often the industrial park has its own railroad, or its tracks are served by a local company or nearby short line, maintaining a connection with the larger rail network elsewhere.
Our HO scale Winston-Salem Southbound layout from several years ago was one version of the industrial park railroad. The WSS was a small bridge line railroad connecting the Norfolk & Western with the Atlantic Coast Line. While much of its main line did not have a lot of on-line customers, the Southbound did have a branch line called The Tar Branch leading to a tight pocket of businesses concentrated over several blocks in Salem, North Carolina. These businesses included manufacturers, warehouses, and food distributors. The WSS was their only railroad connection with the outside world, and they kept the little line busy for many years.
It’s this type of concentrated traffic that makes industrial park railroading popular with modelers. In a fairly small space, a well-thought-out industrial park can provide hours of modeling and operating enjoyment. As a case in point, the HO scale Winston-Salem Southbound layout has 9 distinct customers, plus two team tracks, which can serve a variety of off-layout businesses – all in the space of about 8 feet by 30” at its deepest.
A New layout for 2025
In developing our new project railroad for 2025 on Trains.com Video and 2026 in Model Railroader magazine, we returned to the idea of industrial park railroading.
After moving into our new office spaces in Brookfield, Wisconsin, the MR team needed a new, somewhat larger HO scale model railroad on which to test products and shoot video. While we couldn’t reproduce the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy to any scale or scope of what we’d once had at the old office, we could capture a bit of the flavor while at the same time build a model railroad that would meet our needs and be fun to run and operate. Industrial park railroading fit that bill nicely, and we used two different example railroads as our starting point.
SMS Connection
One part of our East Troy Industrial Park project was inspired by the SMS Rail Lines’ operation at the Pureland Industrial Complex in Bridgeport, New Jersey. The complex features more than a dozen modern manufacturing and distribution businesses set in a central location and served by the SMS, a small Class III railroad. One of the biggest charms of the line is that the SMS owns and operates a fleet of old Baldwin switchers to do some of the work. Another fun fact is that SMS uses its shops to do repair work for the Woodstown Central museum railroad – in fact, they’ve just rebuilt an 0-6-0 steam locomotive for that group.
We featured the SMS and the Pureland complex in 2016 in our video series, Taking Care of Business, which you can watch here on Trains.com Video.
A few of the rail-served industries that we thought we might be able to use on our HO layout included the Home Depot Distribution Center, which receives both boxcars and flatcars of wood products, as well as several plastics plants, one of which makes plastic garbage bags. Also of interest is the large transloading service area that transfers materials from tank cars, hoppers, and flats to trucks. And a fun, somewhat unique sort of business on SMS is Central Ink, which receives ink in tank cars that it then repackages for distribution.
We spent a lot of time digging through Google satellite imagery to trace the tracks of the Pureland complex, and it was interesting to see how businesses have come and gone, as well as how others have replaced them. You also can’t fail to notice that there is big business in using empty tracks for rail car storage. SMS has just about every empty spur and siding crammed with stored cars. While storing cars is something we have no intention of modeling on our project, it is one way that small Class III railroads like SMS earn revenue.
Municipality of East Troy RR
As shown with our earlier WSS example, industrial short line railroading isn’t a new concept. In fact, East Troy, Wisconsin, the setting for our project, once had its own short line freight railroad. Until 1939, one of The Milwaukee Electric Railroad & Light Co.’s interurban lines served the community’s collection of businesses that required railroad access. In fact, arguably, while the small community never really benefitted from the passenger trains of TMER&L’s daily schedule, its small collection of businesses was grateful for the freight rail service.
East Troy was never meant to be a western terminal for the TMER&L. There had been grand plans to reach the more developed town of Elkhorn, Wis, then head south to the rich tourist area of Williams Bay on the shores of Lake Geneva. In fact, some surveying and grading on the line had been accomplished as far southwest as Janesville. But when money and enthusiasm for westward expansion of the interurban line from Milwaukee ran out, East Troy, a community of then much less than 1,000 people in the early 1900s, became the default end of the line.
When the TMER&L announced it planned to discontinue service to East Troy in 1939, the town purchased their part of the line, which connected to the Soo Line RR six miles away in Mukwonago, Wis. Called the Municipality of East Troy RR, it offered freight-only service to its customers until 2003. Although it no longer delivers freight, the line still exists and is owned and operated by the East Troy Railroad Museum. The museum still maintains an outside rail connection, now with the Canadian National, who owns the former Soo tracks.
Businesses at one time served by the METRR included Baker Labs, East Troy Lumber, Standard Oil, and Trent Tube. While most of those customers are long gone, the tracks leading to the Trent Tube plant and Wisconsin Oven Corp. are still there, and both manufacturing concerns are alive and well and could conceivably need rail service again one day.
MR&T history in the TMER&L
For those of you who are familiar with the old Milwaukee, Racine & Troy HO scale layout, you’ll likely recognize some of the names from the TMER&L’s original interurban line. In fact, much of the MR&T’s right-of-way was loosely based upon the interurban line to East Troy and beyond.
Williams Bay was the last modeled town on the west end of the old MR&T and was to have been a destination for the interurban line too. Traveling back east from Williams Bay on both the TMER&L and the MR&T were the towns of Lake Beulah and then Mukwonago with its connection to the CN (former Soo). The next town up was Big Bend, which sits along the Fox River and once had a large lumber yard, coal dealer, and machine shop. Some of the buildings still stand, and all were once served by the TMER&L. Still further east was Hales Corners, with more freight customers and also on the main line of the original MR&T.
While the MR&T had a branch north out of Williams Bay to Troy, Wis., it was largely added by the staff to get a “T” destination into the railroad name. (Milwaukee, Racine & Troy was a play on the names Model Railroader and Trains.) East Troy was ignored by the original planers of the club layout. It’s too bad, really, as East Troy has a lot to offer in most any railroad era.
From the time the Municipality of East Troy RR took over in 1939 and up into the 1970s, freight cars were handled using an electric freight motor. The line acquired a 44-ton diesel in 1969, and the line operated on diesel power until 2003. Today, the trolly museum maintains the property, running all sorts of regular and special services through much of the year. If you are interested in riding on the line we’re building, you can learn more about the museum’s train schedule here.
With our new layout, we felt it was time to give East Troy some deserved attention in the history of the MR&T.
The East Troy Industrial Park
Part of the fun of making a freelanced model railroad is trying to get it as close to a prototype operation as possible, then tailor the layout to fit your space and situation. We felt that East Troy could lend itself well to this treatment, so using all that we learned about the town, the TMER&L and METRR lines, as well as SMS Rail Lines’ New Jersey operation, we put together plans for the East Troy Industrial Park RR.
Our design is for an L-shaped HO scale layout that measures 14 x 19 feet. The railroad has a 28” minimum curve radius on the main line and uses no. 5 turnouts or larger throughout. It will feature some of the East Troy Trolly Museum’s main line and operation, small pieces of both the town of Mukwonago and East Troy, and assorted industries collected from SMS in New Jersey and from southeastern Wisconsin. It also features an option to later add more of the trolley operation through a plug-in addition.
Freight service on the ETIP will be handled by the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy. While set in modern day, this layout could easily be backdated to most any operating plan in the past 120 years with minor changes to the industry choices and structures.
Starting in Mukwonago
Starting at the far right of the railroad is the town of Mukwonago. The ETIP features a main-line connection with the Canadian National for interchange traffic. While at first we kicked around ideas for making an all-new railroad to operate the East Troy Industrial Park, we really did need some sort of replacement for the Milwaukee, Racine & Troy. Since the MR&T was originally in Mukwonago, it made sense that it would maintain a connection to the trolley museum’s tracks.
The original TMER&L main line passed under the Soo Line at Mukwonago, so we’ve included that here as well. It opens the possibility for future expansion, but for now, we’ll assume that the MR&T branched off of its own main line, crossed under the CN, and reached the trolley’s right-of-way. The MR&T operates over the main line using trackage rights negotiated with the museum to reach the East Troy Industrial Park.
Mukwonago features the only passing siding on the entire railroad. Facing point switch moves in East Troy will need to be thought out in advance here. Another option would be to operate with a small 4-axle locomotive at each end of the train, but space will be tight in East Troy either way.
The interchange track is on an incline to reach the main but can be used as a yard track on the layout to help sort cars.
The East Troy Trolley Museum doesn’t actually maintain a depot in Mukwonago but instead has an arrangement with The Elegant Farmer boutique, where it maintains a platform and uses it as a stop for its eastward summer excursion runs. Still, I needed something in the park in Mukwonago, so I included a small depot and a single track for the museum’s use. We plan to have one or more trolleys on the layout, complete with overhead wire, and this will serve as a good place to display them. The actual trolley tracks terminate in a siding in a park in Mukwonago, just before the interchange with the CN, so our version is still close to what is there, only we are using the siding for MR&T traffic instead.
East Troy Industrial
This is where life and the operation of the railroad gets really involved on the HO scale layout. At East Troy, the trolley line makes a quick exit via a 24” radius curve off the front of the railroad. There are a lot of interesting things we could model for the museum yet, including the formidable brick substation building the railroad uses as its museum and main depot, as well as the car storage barns. That can all be added later by building a section that plugs into the front of the railroad and will likely be a future series of articles and videos.
Modern industries and the freight cars that serve them take up a lot of space. The plan’s 33 linear feet filled up quickly, so there are just seven featured here at present. That may change as we get into building the layout and we can look at fitting one or two more, so keep in mind that any layout at this phase is still a work in progress.
Starting at the far end of East Troy is a corn syrup transloading terminal. SMS does big business in transloading materials, and it fit to put something like that here. This is the only building we are reusing from the original MR&T, but it will need to be modified to fit its new location. Andy Sperandeo built the original model for Williams Bay years ago, and we are happy to include it. The other ideal thing about it is that the tank cars used in corn syrup service are rather compact by today’s standards, which means we can get more of them on the layout.
Next to the corn syrup terminal is an open space that we plan to use for further transloading. SMS transloads just about everything, including aggregates, plastic pellets, and various food commodities. They also have shipped contaminated earth in containers on flatcars. With just a few details and some trucks, we can spot just about any cars at this location, and we have the room to add more tracks to it later if we choose to do so.
The next building in line is the Menards Distribution Center. Based upon the Home Depot facility in Bridgeport, N.J., we decided to make ours a Menards operation instead, since it is a local Wisconsin chain and they make some model train products. The center receives boxcars of building materials, including plywood, drywall, paneling, and other sheet goods.
Plastics manufacturers are just about everywhere, so we wanted at least one on the layout. Heritage Bag from SMS is a large, non-descript building with a stack of plastic pellet tanks along one wall. It is constantly surrounded by pellet hoppers. That seemed to fit the bill here. It would also keep us from having to model more visible plastics manufacturing operations, such as with drain tile. The spur is more than 6-feet long, so we can have several hoppers in the plant at once.
In the corner is Wisconsin Oven. This is an East Troy manufacturer that makes industrial ovens for all sorts of heat-treating processes. The plant occupies some of the old Trent Tube buildings, and while it is not presently rail served, all of the tracks still exist, so it could be should the need arise. For our layout, Wisconsin Oven will receive coil steel cars and ship out large, finished goods via flatcars with tarps.
Perhaps the largest industry in the East Troy Industrial Park is a transplant from nearby Burlington, Wis. The Ardagh Group makes glass bottles and other packaging in Burlington, and I’ve long had my eye on this industry as being ideal to include on a model railroad. The plant receives sand and other raw materials used in the glass-making process in 2-bay covered hoppers. There are always a number of these short cars on the spurs or in the unloading house. Because there are usually so many, I’ve given the model version of the plant two tracks, like its prototype. Part of the fun of switching the factory is keeping track of which cars the plant wants to unload next and which are to be shuttled off to the second track for storage. Like the corn syrup cars, this will provide smaller rolling stock to offset some of the larger cars found on the layout.
Finally, we’ve included Central Ink Corp. as our last, compact industry. This has a spur for a single tank car and will likely have a truck loading dock on one side. By placing the industry on an angle, much like the Menards warehouse, we can curve the track from the main line to run alongside the building. We may eventually build the structure so the track enters through a large overhead door to protect tank cars during the ink unloading process.
The actual building used by Central Ink, located in Bridgeport, N.J., is a rather plain, tan brick industrial structure. However, as a bonus, the same building houses a second business, Royal Sugar, which also at one time received carloads of refined sugar for repackaging. We may be able to use this industry on our layout for both, doubling its use.
Watch the build
It will take us most of 2025 to build the East Troy Industrial Park, and you are welcome to follow along in the many videos and articles that will appear in coming months on Trains.com, as well as in Model Railroader magazine, starting in the January 2026 issue. In addition, members to Trains.com can check out our progress regularly on the workshop webcam. While we won’t be working on the railroad every day, we will be in the shop quite a bit through spring, and you can watch the fun as it unfolds. The East Troy Industrial Park should prove to be an entertaining railroad for all involved, and we can’t wait to start switching trains on it!
Project Railroad Scope:
- Layout name: East Troy Industrial Park (ETIP)
- HO scale
- Industrial switching railroad
- 14 x 19 feet
- L-girder benchwork
- Code 83 flextrack
- Modern era (as built), but easily modified for the 70s/80s diesel operation, 1940s-60s electric freight operation, or as a 1920s/30s interurban railroad with passenger service
- Milwaukee, Racine & Troy as the operator of the ETIP RR
- Includes signature industries from both SMS Pureland Industrial Complex in New Jersey and businesses from southeastern Wisconsin
- Includes a stretch of the East Troy Railroad Museum’s overhead wire and right of way, as well as the option to feature museum equipment, as found on both the SMS and METRR prototypes
- NCE Digital Command Control
- Walthers turnout control
This looks like a great project layout; there’s a video of the SMS rail lines switching the Home Depot distribution center on YouTube that shows the process of serving it in great detail. One comment regarding the trash bag plant that I didn’t see addressed; each plastics hopper has a specific type of plastic in it, and are frequently spotted in a specific position to line up with the unloading hose for that material that goes to that silo, which is done to manage contamination. I worked in a power cable plant where we did the same for our plastics compounds that CSX delivered, and complex films like garbage bags and plastic film for packaging have many different compounds in their layers to get the desired performance from the product. Very similar to the glass plant and the corn syrup terminal!
good type of layout for people with ideas to stat up or downsize. I am from NJ and been to SMS rail op many ideas fo model railroading and railfanning NEw Year/New ideas. KEEP ON TRACK
Just noticed this. The MR&T end seems like it would need another set of legs at the end. Not sure the cantilever design will be successful, unless you attach it to the wall. What say ye?
excellent choice and eminently doing for modelers. Plenty od area to add “beyond the layout” areas.
That fits plenty of model railroading into a manageable area. Avoids the “gotta have double track and 30 car long freight train” notion, and makes it easier to reach a certain level of completion. Just make sure they have a derail on the lower end of CN interchange track – otherwise cars may get down to the East Troy a fit sooner than expected from CN!
I love the idea that something was “borrowed” from Burlington WI and the mention of the chocolate factory. Went to a couple of “Chocolate Festivals” there in the mid 90’s, and my “Railroad You Can Model” article MR used in the later 90’s (then the WC main) stopped just short of there!
Looks like a very well thought out design and now get to watch y’all build it. Anticipation.
Is it intended to be “permanent” in the workshop? Are you planning a dust cover for it?
What about lighting? Based on the video image and the picture showing the ceiling, overall lighting in that room doesn’t seem all that great for general use, much less layout lighting.
Glad to hear about the new project railroad David. I was just recently wondering about when a new project would appear. Looking forward to following the progress via webcam and the articles and videos to come!
I’m still working on my shelf layout in my home office. After a couple of years I have made some significant progress. Perhaps some of the work you and the MR staff do on this layout will inspire me to complete mine.
I love the concept. As someone who hasn’t had room for the layout of a lifetime, I’ve been building shelf layouts for years. The WSSB and your Sand Creek logging have been favorites of mine, in fact led me to subscribe to Video Plus back then. I’m currently working on a proto-freelance shelf layout of a Carolina cotton mill town in the mid 1950s, but have much less space to work in. Can’t wait to see the progress.
MR&T is back! Can’t wait until the layout is complete. Not quite like the original but it can be expanded and you can return the layout to what we lost. Good luck with the build MR Staff.
You still might want a very short passing track at the left end of the layout. I have on two of my layout very short passing track large enough to hold to hold an engine and 1 car, other wise you could get frustrated having to shove cars the entire length of the layout. I have note some layouts in Great Model Railroads do not have a passing track. I suppose if you ran 2 44 ton switchers, you could put one at each of a train. My version of WSS has a passing siding that will hold 2 G scale cars.
Cheers,
Jeff Damerst
Very much looking forward to this layout build. Especially the Ardagh glass bottle plant in Burlington. I worked for the company just north of Ardagh (Lavelle Ind., a custom rubber & plastics molder) for 38 years, retiring in 2020. Three or four times, over those years, I would crest the hill just south of the glass factory on my way into work to find that a hopper – along with the bumper – had been shoved off the end of the spur by the car-puller. I often wondered if anyone ever got fired over that. An intersting note; while Lavelle is not rail-served, there is a spur running along the north wall. It’s Occasionally used to spot box cars for the Nestles chocolate plant over on Pine St.
That’s totally cool, Michael. I saw the spur from Google Satellite, and I wondered if it was something else I could add to the layout. I’d explored Burlington thoroughly several years ago with the idea of designing a layout for some of the industries, but I didn’t get back to it. Funny on the car and bumper stories. I’d often wondered if that happened as I drive past the location a lot.
Great modern concept. My Penn Western serves 4 industrial districts (no towns), with the largest an auto plant with 29 car spots on an “L” module. Includes space for 9 autoracks loading new cars. Another is Port Newark with two 10′ container tracks and 4 industries. Look forward to your efforts.
Great layout idea, Roger. Large plants, like an auto plant, can often be an entire layout all on their own. If you feel like it, send me some photos – popp@firecrown.com – I’d love to see what you’ve done. – David