Okay.I'm planning on modeling Northwest Texas and the Southern Panhandle circa May 1959.
Besides the way freight,I'd like to have a modest passenger service,so I've narrowed it down to either the now abandoned Dennison-Wichita Falls line on the Katy or the Panhandle&Santa Fe Lubbock-Amarillo line.
Now until the summer of '59,the Katy ran either an RDC3 and when it was in the shop,an FP7 with a Baggage/RPO and a Chair Car.
While the P&SF ran the Eastern Express/West Texas Express from Lubbock to Amarillo where it connected with the San Francisco Chief in Amarillo and the California Special in Lubbock.
Both trains consisted of an E8m;Baggage Express Car;10-6 or 6-6-4 Sleeper and a Chair Car.In Steve Goen's book"Santa Fe In The Lone Star State",sometimes a'Torpedo Boat'GP7 was subsisted for the E8m.
Now modeling both trains are fairly easy to model.Intermountain used to have an FP7 in the(in)famous"William Deramus Red"scheme and Walthers offers a heavyweight chair car in pullman green,though not in Katy lettering.
However,a quick removal of whatever the road name is and replacing it with MKT decals takes care of that.Now finding a heavyweight Baggage/RPO is a little hard,but if you can find either an Athearn or Rivarossi/IHC version,a quick paint job'd work.
The RDC3 is very easy as Life Like/Walthers has one,though not in MKT scheme.But Oddballs Decals offers Katy decals so a quick repaint and decal would work.
Now the Santa Fe's very easy.Athearn;ConCor and Walthers all offer the Streamlined Baggage Car in Santa Fe scheme,plus while Athearn offers the chair car lettered for the Santa Fe and Walthers offers a 10-6 and(I think)the 6-6-4 in Santa Fe as well.
While the E8m is kinda hard to find,any Warbonnet Scheme F3/7'll work.Now getting to the main part of my question.
The main industries in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle are Agriculture:Cattle;Cotton and Wheat and Oil and Gas. Now modeling Cattle and Wheat is no problem as both Heljan and Walthers make grain elevators and HO Scale cattle are available from many manufacturers including Bachmann;Walthers and Woodland Scenics plus Life Like and Campbell make models of stockpens.
And Oil of course is no problem either as Walthers has models of pumpjacks.
Now modeling cotton is the problem!!While there are a lot of cotton gins and compresses around-both abandoned and working-all over Texas,the question is how do you model either a cotton gin or compress?
Your help is appreciated.
John T.Patterson-aka-The Aztec Eagle.
First, here's a previous thread on the topic.
Second - would cotton gins (the structures holding the equipment at least) look all that different from other processing facilities of their era? The E.L. Moore article mentioned in the linked thread was a standard wood-frame building with a covered drive-thru unloading shed that had a "tube" hanging down to represent the vaccuum system to suck up the cotton for processing. And knowning Moore, a hand-lettered sign out front.
By the late 1950s, you could use concrete block or corrugated buildings, not sure if the Butler building construction explemified by Pikestuff would be in general usage by that era.
I would model corrugated metal buildings. The cotton would be pressed into bales and shipped in boxcars.
I would also model a cotton seed mill. Cotton seed would be trucked in from the gins. The mill would produce several products:
The mill would be a large corrugated metal building. If you look at 5th & Pennsylvannia Aves in Pine Bluff, AR or Planters Dr. and Commerce Rd in Pine Bluff, AR there are two cotton seed mills. Gets a little more variety to loading pattern.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Here's a picture of a period cotton bail:
My suggestion for making them would be to use white Styrofoam. Wrap it with brown paper and use black thread for the straps.
Modeling the Pennsylvania Railroad in N Scale.
www.prr-nscale.blogspot.com
Here's a link to a gin/oil mill in SC. Somewhere around here I have some color pictures and drawings I did while in high school back in the 70s before it was torn down. Keep meaning to do a scratchbuild on it. It was still partly in service in the 60s but pretty much shut down by the 70s as best I recall as the area planted less cotton. Overall construction was a mix of brick, wood, and corrugated.
http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/union/S10817744022/pages/S1081774402226.htm
GP-9_Man11786 Here's a picture of a period cotton bail: My suggestion for making them would be to use white Styrofoam. Wrap it with brown paper and use black thread for the straps.
I bought the cotton bails all ready made up and packaged from a hobby shop back in the 1960s and put them into this old Athearn box car at the time. Can't tell you the manufacture was.
Try that picture again.
Here are some of my notes of the Cotton Industry for railroad modeling...
Cotton production in US
total 13 2/3 million bales
Texas 4 1/4 million
other southern states 6 2/3 million
output to US mills 9 1/2 million bales
(85% of that to 4 states: Alabama, Georgia, N & S Carolina)
export 5 million bales
_Yearbook of Agriculture 1954_ p.449
28,000 bales on one platform, Paris,TX 1920?
_Journal of Tx Shortline RRs_ MayJuneJuly98 (Paris issue) p.26
mechanical cotton picker of 1950s, painting.
_Texas, Our Heritage_ (1962) p.324
IH-McCormack cotton picker of 1950s, _Texas, Our Heritage_ (1962 textbook) p.328
cotton bale weighing, gin interior. _Texas, Our Heritage_ (1962) p.329
U.S. Cotton Bale Dimensions
BAGS
Textile container manufacturers in Texas:
Houston 7 Dallas/FtWorth 3 Lubbock 1
per _Atlas of Texas_ p.69
COTTON PRODUCTION
heaviest (1959 figures) in belt from Port LaVaca to Gainsville,
in Valley, Lubbock area, TransPecos
substantial in "Cane Belt" AREA
almost NONE Harris, Galveston, East Texas counties.
-from _Atlas of Texas_ (Arbingust)
COTTON SURPLUS WAREHOUSING
Government warehouse of cotton for price stabilization. Adopted in 30s, surplus cleared out for WW2 usage, heavy civilian demand 1946, surpluses again by late 40s. In July 1955, surplus cotton from past crops totalled 11.1 million bales.
_The Life and Times of King Cotton_, David L. Cohn, Oxford U.Press,
1956 [CC Pub Lib 338.17 COH]
COTTON TEXTILE MILLING
Cotton mills in Texas:
Houston, Cero, New Braunfels, Brenham, Bonham, 2 Groesbeck
Corsicana, Hillsboro, Sherman, McKinney
Woolen mill: Brownwood, Post
_Atlas of Texas_ p.73
80% of the nation's cotton textile spindles and 82% of the looms in the Southern states (1955). North Carolina is heart of the cotton- textile industry, followed by South Carolina, Georgia, Massachusetts.
Fulton Bag & Cotton Mills plant in New Orleans for cotton, burlap & paper bags _Business Week_ Nov.12, 1955 p.75
Cottonseed
most sold to ginners, who sell to processors
Linters used in cellulose
Hull for feed
Oil
Cake or meal for feed
COTTONSEED OIL
Cottonseed mills in 1953
5 in Rio Grande Valley
11 between CC and El Campo
12 in Brazos Valley
10 in Panhandle & San Angelo
4 El Paso
_Yearbook of Agriculture 1954_ p.457
Cottonseed oil mills 50 or more employees in Texas 1962
Lubbock 2 Ft Worth 2 Brenham Sealy Corpus Christi Alice
none East Texas
_Atlas of Texas_ p.75
__
description of Dallas Proctor & Gamble plant which
processes cottonseed oil into cooking & vegetable
oils. _WPA Dallas Guide_, p.349.
Coleman Cotton Oil Mill shown on 1930 plat of Coleman TX on ATSF
Temple-Texico line. _Sanborn's Insurance Maps_ at CC Pub Library,
COTTON PRODUCTS & BY PRODUCTS
chart and pix _World Book_, 1958 p.C-1766
EXPORT
Cotton, bulk to China, Iraq, Turkey, Yugoslavia
container to Germany, France, Spain, Italy
info from exhibit, Center for Transportation & Commerce, Galveston
Corpus Christi Port could load 2500 bales in one 8-hg\our day by the middle 1970s,
per _Corpus Christi: a picture postcard history_ pic.125
2 million- 500 lb bales exported/year in mid 1950s nationally
Cotton export 5 million bales _Yearbook of Agriculture 1954_ p.449
GINS
Historic cotton gins of Brazos Valley,
cotton museums & exhibits, _Texas Hwys_ Apr93 p.12-21.
The Joint Cotton Industry Bale Packaging Committee (JCIBPC) established the following guidelines in 2001 to clarify the dimensions of cotton bales compressed to U.S. Gin Universal Density Bale standards: "…the outside bulge to bulge (thickness) dimensions shall average no greater than 33 inches (.84 m) and outliers are not to exceed 34 inches (.86 m)."
The Joint Cotton Industry Bale Packaging Committee (JCIBPC) established the following guidelines in 2001 to clarify the dimensions of cotton bales compressed to U.S. Gin Universal Density Bale standards:
"…the outside bulge to bulge (thickness) dimensions shall average no greater than 33 inches (.84 m) and outliers are not to exceed 34 inches (.86 m)."
COTTON INDUSTRY RELATED STRUCTURES
Compress, Belen NewMex pix RailModJournal Apr93 p.10
Compress, Corpus Christi, Aransas Compress
(near present Harbor Bridge) blt 1928
12' high concrete walls, 4' raised clerestories,
16' firewalls between sections.
Sections 250' wide, 150-250' long/section
100' space between rows of sheds.
data from _Sanborn Fire Insurance Map_, 1931
Compress, Corpus Christi, Gulf Compress
located on 19th street and Tex Mex tracks
14' high concrete walls sheds 250' wide
100' space between rows of sheds
above- Gulf Compress, Corpus Christi
Compress, Galveston
interior view, _Ray Miller's Galveston_ 2nd edition p.87
Cotton gin; bale wagon _World Book_, 1958 p.__C-1760
Gin by Durrenberger _MR_ June82 p.70
Gin by E.L.Moore, _ModRRer_ Sept78 p.54
COTTONSEED
Cotton oil plant, Birmingham AL _Mod RRer_ Oct91 p.94
Storage shed, Belen NewMex pix RailModJournal Apr93 p.10
Harlingen Cotton Oil Mill sheds, KLA photos, Brownsville trip May 2007
port terminal cotton shed on background painting (drawn in Photoshop)
abandoned compress warehouses in Galveston along Broadway
cotton shed district in Galveston
In Indianola, Mississippi, the older part of the structure that houses the current B.B. King museum used to be a cotton gin (indeed, Riley King had worked within that building). It is one of the last gin buildings still standing in the Delta, and is of a "classic" brick design. This is on the Columbus & Greenville RR. I think that the dock on the front of the building in the photo would have been for receiving product from farmers, with the loading dock for the railroad on the back.
Bill