Plastic Hoppers

You know sometimes something simple like this i think would look great on my layout even though it is modern.  Today I drove past this and a pellet hopper was being loaded.

How simple a spur, some hosing, a small scratch built building and a few hoppers. If you zoom out from street view trucks can pull up right on the grass and load their trucks.

This is in wentzville, MO

Inspiration

The inspiration for this layout really comes from a few places. I have been reading through the blogs of lance mindheim. I really like his approach to switching layouts, don't get me wrong I like watching trains run, but as life moves on and priorities change I don't mind watching a train running back and forth over the same line versus watching a train run around in circles.  I really like the puzzle work of switching operations.

I also have found blogs  like http://cnwmodeling.blogspot.com to contain a lot of information that allows for a better understanding of how real railroads operate. So incorporating some of these things with the ideas of Lance's shelf layouts I think there are infinite possibilities for making small switching layouts or a medium size layout that allows for larger industries paper mill and soybean processing plant.