I’ve made some progress on the transition between the on-scene and off-scene portion of the paper plant on my layout.
In the photo below, the long building flat against the wall has been put in place, and all of the ballast and ground surface between that building and the front edge of the layout is now finished. More details will be added later. I’ve also de-bugged the track. I’ll be placing a variety of tanks and piping on the concrete pad in front of that building, and around the two structures in the mid- and foreground (the foreground structure is not in place, and I cropped it out of the photo anyway).
On the prototype, the main building where the tank cars were unloaded had a fan of three tracks that could hold one or two tank cars at a time, and then two tracks for off-spot tank cars. I compromised by having one track pass in front of the building, and then extend into staging where tank cars can be located.
The track closest to the front goes to staging representing the woodchip unloader.
PC 9574 brings its train into the International Paper plant.
Ontario in HO Scale 
Nice job! The weathering on the factory wall is spot on.
Thanks Marco!
Hunter,
As usual, looking great. What brand or type of ballast are you using? This section of layout is coming along nicely!
Best, Scott
Thanks Scott. Much of the ballast in this area is N-scale Highball Cinder Ballast with some N-Scale Highball Light Grey Ballast blended in some places. The remainder is a mix of various ballast materials I sifted from mortar sand, beach sand (from Lake Ontario), and from a pile of limestone gravel at the construction site down the road from my house. The lighter material representing bare earth in the foreground is the powdery stuff that was separated out of my finest sifter.
Hey Hunter: It looks great. How are you getting any work done on it, though, when you have trains to run? 😉
– Trevor (Port Rowan in 1:64)
There’s more building than operating, these days.