The track plan has changed several times over the course of this year. Having only room for an L shaped layout as it is in our spare bedroom, I have tried to devise a plan that is simple to operate but has plenty of opportunity for operations. Lance Mindheim emphacizes car spots, not industries. You can have a dozen industries but if each one only has one car spot, that gets pretty boring. But having half a dozen industries and each one has 2, 3 or 4 car spots and those car spots are for specific types of cars, now you have something interesting. For example, a Frozen Food distributor. Maybe it has 3 loading doors. One is for incoming frozen products, so thats a reefer.One is for incoming containers, boxes, crates, jars etc. So thats a regular box car. And one is for outgoing shipments. Again a reefer. Then you also have a spot somewhere next to the building for a tank car carrying some other ingredient that the business needs. So you have 3 different types of freight cars for one industry. Much more interesting.
I only have six industries, but those six, have a total of at least 18 car spots! Not too bad. 2 operators could stay very busy, one on each leg of the L. Now if I can persuade the management to allow me to add a movable yard to one end, now I have even more operations because now I have a place to actually build a train to go out.
The possibilities are endless. But for right now this is what I have.
Johnny B's Model Railroading World 
As someone who works for a food wholesaler (that handles rail shipments), having three doors is very feasible – but you wouldn’t have one for each of the uses you’ve outlined. A food wholesaler would likely receive some frozen, but mostly bulk non-time sensitive produce, such as potatoes and carrots, by rail. They’d then ship them out by truck. We don’t do repackaging, so no need for boxes, jars, etc. We take rail 3x a week.
When I worked for Kraft, we’d take in tanks of vegetable oil or hoppers of flour, and maybe send something out is a freezer car, but much of this has gone to truck.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Great information. Thank you. Thats how we make our model railroads better by getting advice from people who know the industries.
LikeLike