Clinton, MO - Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railroad

Discussion in 'Clinton Subdivision' started by dricketts, Nov 14, 2011.

  1. meteor910

    meteor910 2009 Engineer of the Year Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    I believe the MKT's Katy Flyer, the last passenger train on the line, was discontinued in April, 1958.

    Ken
     
  2. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

    What are MRS beer cars? I've googled them but really couldn't find much.
     
  3. TAG1014 (Tom Galbraith RIP 7/15/2020)

    TAG1014 (Tom Galbraith RIP 7/15/2020) Passed Away July 15, 2020 Frisco.org Supporter

    That would be "Manufacturers Railway." Anheuser-Busch's refrigerator car line. "MRS" is their reporting mark.

    Tom G.
     
  4. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Thank you. I'd love to find some photos of those beer cars from anytime through the 50's - 70's. Looks like they're hard to find.
     
  5. meteor910

    meteor910 2009 Engineer of the Year Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    It wasn't all beer. Manufacturers also had regular boxcars, and a few other odds and ends. A-B also made (makes) cans, and a lot of those came in by rail.

    In HO, Bowser makes a MRS 50ft round-roof double door boxcar (1950's-1960's), and Proto 2000 made a 40ft MRS outside-braced Mather boxcar (1930's-1940's). I have both of these. Atlas offered their Alco S-2 in MRS colors (really a nice scheme - a red/green/gold combination). It was a limited release, and I was too slow to get one.

    There may be one or two others in MRS colors.

    MRS performed bridge transfer service between St. Louis and East St. Louis (over the MacArthur Bridge, aka the "Free Bridge", which rarely was free), and did general industrial switching in south St. Louis around the area of the big A-B brewery.

    MRS was owned by A-B Chairman of the Board for many years, August A. Busch, Jr, aka "Gussie". Their direct connections were with the MP and the TRRA in St. Louis, and with the A&S in East St. Louis. They did interchange traffic with the Frisco via TRRA. Via A&S and TRRA, they interchanged with every road that came into St Louis. Total MRS mileage was only 42.4 miles.

    Ken
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2023
  6. wmrx

    wmrx MP Trainmaster

    Until the merger with UP, the MKT interchanged a sizable number of cars with the KCS at Eve, MO. This was traffic to and from St. Louis and would include a lot of petrochemical (tank car) business from the Gulf coast. From what I understand blocks as large as 60 cars were swapped here.

    The Katy struggled most of its life and the condition of the line between Parsons and St. Louis reflected that. In the 1980s the state of Missouri loaned and/or gave the Katy a large sum of money to upgrade the line with CWR between the MO-KS line and La Due which was the station where the spur branched off for the KCP&L Montrose Generating Station.

    The main driver for this was the coal train that ran from Ft. Scott to Ladue. When the UP took over in 1989 the track from Ft. Scott to the MO-KS line had a max speed of 25 mph with one 5 mph bridge. The rebuilt portion from the state line to La Due was allowed 40 mph and from La Due to Sedalia it was back to 25 mph.

    UP wanted to keep the track from Sedalia to La Due for the day that it got the coal contract all the way from the mine. Unfortunately, that section was in such bad shape that they abandoned it in favor of the former MP Carthage Subdivision to Nevada where it then crossed over to the old Katy line. The 40 mph track eventually was dropped to 25 mph and the 25 mph track went to 10 mph. The old jointed rail was so bad that you knew instantly when you crossed the state line.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2023
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  7. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

    So this is not LuDue, Mo just a few miles west of St. Louis city?
     
  8. wmrx

    wmrx MP Trainmaster

    No it's not. Apparently, this little town was never incorporated and never had a post office. It's a station in the railroad timetable, but is rather obscure, otherwise. If you go to Mapquest and do a search for Clinton, you will see LaDue just to the southwest about halfway between Cinton and Montrose.
     
  9. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Thanks for the info. I tried to post some questions on the MKT yahoo group but needless to say yahoo groups is not very navigation friendly. I'm not even sure my post showed up.

    I was on the current MNA (Missouri Northern Arkansas) just south of Clinton about a week ago. The track seems in pretty good shape. So does the old MoPac line north of Nevada. Some pretty good elevation changes but otherwise not bad.
     
  10. meteor910

    meteor910 2009 Engineer of the Year Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Yes, two different places. Don't confuse La Due, MO, on the MKT and really just a point on the railroad, with Ladue, MO, a very wealthy St Louis County community, Zip 63124.

    In fact, Ladue (the St. Louis County one) was on the MP's old Creve Coeur branch until the 1960's. That's the only RR that was ever close to Ladue. To the north a few miles is the former Rock Island in Olivette. To the south a few miles are the MP and the SLSF main lines in Kirkwood. To the east of Ladue was the TRRA in Clayton, now Metrolink light rail.

    Ken
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2023
  11. WindsorSpring

    WindsorSpring Member

    Because of that little southwest Missouri town on the MKT, public high school students in the St. Louis suburb, some of whom lived on Picardy Lane (on topic!), attended "Horton Watkins High School" instead of "Ladue High School." They are none the worse for the wear, however.
     
  12. meteor910

    meteor910 2009 Engineer of the Year Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Son Kurt is a graduate of Ladue Horton Watkins High School. Mr. Horton Watkins was an executive with International Shoe here in St Louis. After his passing, his widow donated the property to the Ladue School District for their new high school, with the stipulation that his name be included in the school name. It really had little to do with LaDue on the MKT.

    But this is a Frisco biased place! Many of the Frisco's streamlined passenger cars were named for towns in and around the Ladue area - must have been a lot of Frisco executives living out here! Examples - Ladue itself, Picardy Lane (a neighborhood in Ladue), Clayton, Rock Hill, Normandy (where I went to HS), Olivette, Pasadena Hills, Valley Park, Clayton, Baden, Ferguson, Kirkwood, Richmond Heights, University City (where my dad went to HS), Webster Groves (where Caroline went to HS), Huntleigh, Manchester, and Maplewood.

    Ken
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 4, 2011
  13. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

  14. WindsorSpring

    WindsorSpring Member

    I have a booklet issued in 1985 commemorating the centennial of Manufacturers Railway Company. While there are many pictures, they probably will not reproduce well, so you will have to rely on my verbal description. While it shows many locomotives, there are few depictions of cars.

    If you open your link, notice pretty far down there are two Train Miniature Malt Nutrine cars in white with bottles to the left of the door and the A&Eagle to the right. Those show up in the booklet in a picture enlarged from the corporate seal. Other photographs in the book indicate the scheme was a "19th century" one.

    As for the other schemes, I believe regulations after 1930 forbade explicit mention of a beer product on the sides of railcars, so these may all be imaginary. Therefore most post-1930 schemes were simple lettering with a "neutral logo" if any was shown.

    For example, letterheads from the 1950's reproduced in the booklet show what looks like a white car. Left of the door, there is the Manufacturers logo, under it "S.L.R.X" with the number. The right of the door shows "ST. LOUIS REFRIGERATOR CAR COMPANY" taking up 3 lines.

    Most of my 41 years were in the beer production areas. Therefore I saw firsthand much of the raw material handling (lots of CNW, SSW, ATSF, SP, UP, MP, RI and 1 or 2 SLSF covered hoppers), but got little to no exposure to the finished-goods cars. Therefore, the only clear memories I have are of the gray, brown and black beer cars from the post-1985-to-near-present. I do recall seeing some cars with the green, or very faint green to white scheme, in the 1950's. These probably were plain-lettered as I describe above.

    The Athearn trailers look right, but, with all due respect, none of these time-sensitive loads would have been routed MKT TOFC out of St. Louis!

    George
     
  15. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Thanks for all the great information George.

    Do I understand you correctly? No beer would have been shipped on the MKT through Clinton. What about John's post #17 in this thread. He mentions quite a few MRS beer cars on the MKT through Clinton.
     
  16. wmrx

    wmrx MP Trainmaster

    If you go to the following web page you will see an index for pictures of various cars that were operated by MRS. Just pick your car type and date.

    Here's the link - http://rr-fallenflags.org/mrs/mrs.html .
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2023
  17. meteor910

    meteor910 2009 Engineer of the Year Staff Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Here is an actual Anheuser Busch beer car pic, date unknown. ACF picture. Markings are for the St Louis Refrigerator Car Company as described by WindsorSpring.

    If you really want to get the lowdown on these older "billboard" reefer cars, A-B as well as others, look for the book recently released by Richard Hendrickson and Ed Kaminski on just this topic. Signature Press I believe.

    Ken
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2023
  18. Brad Slone

    Brad Slone Member Frisco.org Supporter

    Sunshine Models offered a nice versions of the SLRX (St Louis Refrigerator) 36' beer reefers which was owned by AB. Don't know if these would be what you are looking for.

    Brad Slone
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Dec 13, 2023
  19. WindsorSpring

    WindsorSpring Member

    I am sorry you got that impression. My statement was only about TOFC. There could have been some beer routing over the MKT as mvtelegrapher mentions in post #17. I just do not think it went in a Budweiser-logo trailer on a flatcar over that route.

    In the 1970's, beer would have traveled in insulated box cars similar to MRS 2018 shown here:
    http://rr-fallenflags.org/mrs/mrs2018lra.jpg

    Thanks to wmrx for the link to the fallen flags website! It helps a failing (or nonexistent!) memory. Note, the basic color scheme for the car in this 1976 photo is white. Post-1985 or so, as I mention in #34, the RBL insulated box cars for beer were gray, rust-brown and black.

    The car in Ken's (Meteor910) post #37 is very similar to the one the Manufacturers Railway booklet mentions as being from the 19th century.

    George
     
  20. dricketts

    dricketts Member Frisco.org Supporter

    No prob. I just read you post again and it makes perfect sense now. I should have caught that the first time. I can't imagine seeing any pretty Budweiser bow ties on anything traveling through Clinton myself. :eek:
     

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