Does anyone have a modern saw mill on their layout? I'm thinking of adding one, and would like to see what others have done. I have a place that all of my wood chips come from, just thinking there may be more than wood chips to be produced!
Modern Saw Mill
- Thread starter SD90
- Start date
If you ever get the chance to go along the Fraser River in the Abbotsford/Mission area you will see all kinds of sawmills. Most look like they have bee around for a while but there are huge piles of woodchips. You almost have to get in a boat to see them properly. I have never been able to take a photo from the highway as there are trees and a railtrack between the mills and the highway. I have also seen mills in the Shuswap area. Whalters offer a fairly good looking sawmill in their catalogue but it is HO
Your typical modern sawmill out there today would take up more room than most layouts contain to model them properly. They are huge operations.
That being said, one of the benefits of sawmills is that railroad tracks that serve these sawmills generally run alongside the very edge of the complex. It is unusual to find many sawmills anymore that have a lot of sidings running through the complex. This means that you can "model" the actual sawmill with a flat agains the backdrop or a picture or a painting, with the only actual modeled parts on the layout being the loading areas. You will want at least two sidings...one for lumber, one for woodchips. If you plan on using centerbeam flatcars (the primary type of car used to transport lumber today) then your lumber loading track will need to have access to both sides of the cars. However, if you are using boxcars and/or bulkhead flats then you could have a siding going along the inside (or outside) edge of a building, since those types of cars only need one side to load on.
Walthers did make a medium-sized mill in N-scale a few years ago. They first released the kit in HO as part of their "Trees and Trains" series ten or so years ago. The N-scale version of the mill came out a year or two later. Their mill is a medium-sized mill that would probably ship only a car or two each day in today's world.
I do have a number of modern sawmill pictures on two websites that I run. By modern I mean mostly older sawmills that survived until some point within the last decade. Here are some links to them:
Kinzua Corporation mill, Heppner, OR:
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/up.html
(scroll about halfway down the page)
Edward Hines/Snow Mountain Pine mills, Hines, OR:
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/HinesPond.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/HinesMill.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/20Years.html
Edward Hines planing mill, Seneca, OR:
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/SenecaMill.html
Sierra Pacific Industries sawmill, Burney, CA:
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/AlongTheLine/SierraBranch.html
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/FreightOperations/LandrockFamSierraJob2.html
I hope this helps you out some.
Jeff Moore
Elko, NV
That being said, one of the benefits of sawmills is that railroad tracks that serve these sawmills generally run alongside the very edge of the complex. It is unusual to find many sawmills anymore that have a lot of sidings running through the complex. This means that you can "model" the actual sawmill with a flat agains the backdrop or a picture or a painting, with the only actual modeled parts on the layout being the loading areas. You will want at least two sidings...one for lumber, one for woodchips. If you plan on using centerbeam flatcars (the primary type of car used to transport lumber today) then your lumber loading track will need to have access to both sides of the cars. However, if you are using boxcars and/or bulkhead flats then you could have a siding going along the inside (or outside) edge of a building, since those types of cars only need one side to load on.
Walthers did make a medium-sized mill in N-scale a few years ago. They first released the kit in HO as part of their "Trees and Trains" series ten or so years ago. The N-scale version of the mill came out a year or two later. Their mill is a medium-sized mill that would probably ship only a car or two each day in today's world.
I do have a number of modern sawmill pictures on two websites that I run. By modern I mean mostly older sawmills that survived until some point within the last decade. Here are some links to them:
Kinzua Corporation mill, Heppner, OR:
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/up.html
(scroll about halfway down the page)
Edward Hines/Snow Mountain Pine mills, Hines, OR:
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/HinesPond.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/HinesMill.html
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/20Years.html
Edward Hines planing mill, Seneca, OR:
http://www.trainweb.org/highdesertrails/onw/SenecaMill.html
Sierra Pacific Industries sawmill, Burney, CA:
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/AlongTheLine/SierraBranch.html
http://www.trainweb.org/mccloudrails/FreightOperations/LandrockFamSierraJob2.html
I hope this helps you out some.
Jeff Moore
Elko, NV
How about a paper plant? Probably takes up at least as much room, but the one local to me gets a lot of rail service and it allows for some interesting modelling. All you need are a bunch of logs for raw material and a big plant for the finished product to come out of. 
Here's a link to a guy who is modelling the plant I'm talking about: Steve's Trains
Here's a link to a guy who is modelling the plant I'm talking about: Steve's Trains