Wayne Robichaux accompanied me for part of my field trip last weekend.  We decided to head north up Hwy. 51 for a look at things between Hammond and Tangipahoa, Louisiana.  While we didn’t notice any older trestles or bridges to photograph, we did come across this old abandoned fuel oil dealership located a bit south of Amite.  This caught my eye as I plan to have a couple of these facilities on my new layout, one each at Monterey and Willis.

I took quite a few photos around the premises and thought I’d share a few of them here.

Here’s the overall view looking south east at the facility.  That’s a bi-level platform on the front of the building.  The CN mainline is about 25 feet behind my right shoulder.

And looking east we see the loading shed for the trucks.  That’s the main pump house at right.  Note the small tank end in the distance.  This tank was separated from the three main tanks.

The loading shed detail:  the piping from each of the tanks rises next to the platform.  Each has a flow meter on it, then a hose and nozzle for filling the delivery trucks.  Note the supports for the missing signage at the roof ridge.

And finally, an overall view looking north east:  Visible here is the concrete dam built around the tank farm to contain any spillage.

This will aid tremendously in arranging at least one of my facilities.  Since the pumps and piping were still in place, I was able to discern the literal “flow” of the business.  My theory is that if you want to model a business or industry convincingly, you must understand the process or the flow of the business so that you can logically place the structure(s) and supporting elements.

As an added bonus to the day, we had six trains pass by while we were trackside (all duly recorded on silicon).  Taking a break from layout construction to do a little railfanning and research was what I needed.

-Jack