How does one improve the look of an aggregates dealer?

My latest trackside industry addition is Simpson Company. Mr. Simpson sells sand, gravel and other such building materials to local paving companies, landscapers and construction firms. Virginian 4-bay hoppers come and deliver him the materials. He needs a method for getting the aggregates from the hopper cars to the bins for loading onto dump trucks. He needs space so semi dump trucks can easily maneuver on his property. Those large conveyors look overkill. Please name some content that can make a trackside landscaping materials dealership look more authentic. Also note that my hopper grate shown is for two tracks. I need a hopper dump grate that is designed for a single track in American standard gauge.

Those conveyors look like Leefer's 250ft (85m) long ones. He did some similar-looking animated conveyors that were only 150ft (50m) long and an old conveyor only 25ft (8m) long.

There are also many assets on the DLS with 'conveyor' in the name. A few might be suitable.

Here is my improved Simpson Aggregates track side industry.

Here is a list of content ingredients as follows:


Mine-1006,<kuid2:82412:5000045:2> these are the tall high houses (lowered into the ground by -10 meters) where the closed conveyors from the ground meet the horizontal elevated conveyors which distribute product to the bins where wheel loaders load materials onto dump trucks


JJS Conveyor,<kuid2:46819:38096:1> transfers materials from the high houses to the product display bins

mfm conveyor,<kuid2:50567:260991:1> transfers materials to the high houses from the under ground conveyor system which transfers materials from the pits below the hopper cars

Wall 5m dark stone,<kuid2:283805:37922:1> used to make shutters for the window openings in the high houses, placed inside the high houses just behind window openings

Stone Wall 5 metres,<kuid2:82763:1:1> used to build custom display bins to hold the products

Door 7x3,<kuid2:117948:100117:1> installed on the high house closest to the hopper car grate, in theory this would allow human underground access to the conveyor system for maintenance

Cablebox,<kuid2:2000:37000:1> used to make the top and bottom frame rails for the SIMPSON AGGREGATES sign, cablebox spline is also very handy to make concrete curbing and landscaping border trim

Wall 10m dark stone weathered,<kuid2:283805:37921:1> used to make the side pillars for the large SIMSON AGGREGATES sign, use a box, small as a template to position the wall spline points on the ground to make tall narrow pillars, this is essential a very short wall maybe a foot or two long but very tall maybe up to 10 meters in height

Note: When forming the sign parts from spline content, I used a separate layer for different content spline points to aid in grabbing them without disturbing other nearby content. Nothing is more painful THAN TRYING TO POSTION DIFFERENT THINGS WITH SPLINE POINTS CLOSE TOGETHER OR OVER THE TOP OF ONE ANOTHER if the different items are all on the same layer. I lock the layers of the stuff I don't want to be moved by accident.

Here is a picture of my custom high house window shutters made from dark wall positioned inside the buildings.

In Trainz, there are various content object for signs which text can be added under Properties: tall signs, old signs, warehouse signs and platform signs: Look at the CONVEYOR sign above my high house door. This was made by embedding a tall sign in the building just far enough so only the text shows on the outside. The sign is rotated the same degrees as the building, 180, so the text is flash with the wall on the outside.

I call the conveyor buildings HIGH HOUSES because they resemble the high houses clay birds are shot out (by a machine called a trap) on skeet ranges. Skeet is an aerial target shotgun game like trap and sporting clays.

If anybody here is familiar with industrial conveyors and how materials are moved from hopper cars to other locations, please chime in.

I still cannot find a hopper car grate for just one track. In theory, material is collected in bins under the grate when the hopper doors are opened and moved elsewhere by an underground conveyor system.

I have just discovered hopper doors work by air pressure.



Oh by the way, I made the piles of building materials inside the stone-wall bins using the Topo tools and various aggregate textures in Paint. The ground was formed into small mounds and painted in aggregates colors. There are many textures for ballast, pebbles, rock, sand, gravel and so on. I have also formed bridge piers with Topo tools and painted them with textures like concrete!

The yard at Simpson is plenty big enough for even trailer trucks to maneuver.

The only other thing that came to mind was that the whole yard just seems a little too "sterile" for an industrial/commercial site. In a real place like that there would be lots of debris, disused equipment, tire tracks on the ground, muddy puddles, all sorts of work safety signs, maybe some vending machines etc etc.

Dinorius_Redundicus said:

The only other thing that came to mind was that the whole yard just seems a little too "sterile" for an industrial/commercial site. In a real place like that there would be lots of debris, disused equipment, tire tracks on the ground, muddy puddles, all sorts of work safety signs, maybe some vending machines etc etc.

Click to expand...

I build my whole routes with that pristine clinically-clean look. I got that mentality from being in the service. White glove inspections. If I were to own and operate a real railroad or any other business for that matter, it would not look disheveled, period. Even the toilets in the noses of the locomotives would be so sanitary by my standards the Virgin Mary herself would not mind kissing them. I do have dumpsters and garbage cans in my route's places of business. I hate litter and certainly won't model trash over the ground. Speaking of coke machines, I do actually have a few in some route locations including inside the roundhouse. Just about every commercial business I have over my Trainz routes has a telephone booth. I even have ringing sound objects buried under the ground at some phone booths.


When I was a boy of age 5 my family lived in a small town called Novato, California. The Southern Pacific railroad ran through there. There was a feed retailer there called Dairyman's that had covered hoppers deliver grains. There was also a landscaping materials dealer that had a siding where open hoppers parked. To this day, I never understood how the gravel and stuff was moved from the train cars to the open bins in the lot. My parents bought stuff there. My Simpson Aggregates was inspired by that landscaping materials dealership and it is still in business today after 50+ years.

Marin Landscape Materials - Colored Gravel

I just gave Mr. Simpson a truck scale so he knows how much to charge a customer for gravel.

ScaleHouse,<kuid2:44797:280031:2>

The scale house now also serves as the stairwell to the underground conveyor system. The bloke in the blue shirt guides the truck driver onto the scale.

I just revised Simpson again and gave him a double scale up toward the street so trucks can approach the scales in either direction.

Dinorius_Redundicus said:

The only other thing that came to mind was that the whole yard just seems a little too "sterile" for an industrial/commercial site. In a real place like that there would be lots of debris, disused equipment, tire tracks on the ground, muddy puddles, all sorts of work safety signs, maybe some vending machines etc etc.

Click to expand...

Try this ground texture. Rotate it to get the tire track in the directions you want, change the scale for more or less traveled areas

<kuid2:661281:85074:2> PBR Wet Tire Tracks 1 - Seasonal

Christopher824 said:

Try this ground texture. Rotate it to get the tire track in the directions you want, change the scale for more or less traveled areas

<kuid2:661281:85074:2> PBR Wet Tire Tracks 1 - Seasonal

Click to expand...

I just found a truck scale:

JR Truck Scales,<kuid:175455:101105> by 22alpha

Whether they would look appropriate at a gravel yard, I can't yet say. This looks like the kind of truck scale on a highway weigh station where poor drivers are pestered to stop or have a smokey bear stop them otherwise if they pass it up.

Christopher824 said:

Try this ground texture. Rotate it to get the tire track in the directions you want, change the scale for more or less traveled areas

<kuid2:661281:85074:2> PBR Wet Tire Tracks 1 - Seasonal

Click to expand...

JonMyrlennBailey can't use that groundtexture as it's made for TRS19 and he only has TANE and TS12.

My final design of Simpson with a true truck scale and an extension of my benchwork to allow large trucks more maneuverability. Mr. Simpson really takes up a lot of real estate to minimize large vehicle backing on his lot. I have a keen interest in civil engineering, landscaping architecture, improving American infrastructure and making industries operate efficiently and as safely as possible for workers. There is a single truck scale now that is bi-directional.

JR Truck Scales,<kuid:175455:101105> by 22alpha