Cape Girardeau, MO

Does anyone have any photographs of the Marquette GE 45-ton diesel in its original black and yellow scheme?

Pictures have been provided to me by Tim Cannon and Lucy Jones. Lucy's father is leaning out the window.

 

A few pictures from the Kassel's Studio collection of my Uncle Jim Haman which includes over 500 photos of places and objects in SE MO and Frisco Steam.

I request that the photos that I post on this thread be used for personal use only since the negatives are the property of Jim Haman.

If you hover over each thumbnail, you the names are descriptive.

 

A few more photographs.

The second picture is an aerial view of the Cape Girardeau riverfront from the north. In the immediate foreground is Erlbacher Manufacturing Co., then the Missouri Utilities Power Plant, followed by International Shoe Co.

Further south, you can see a barge tied up at Cape Sand Co. Off in the distance, to the south, you can see smoke and dust from Marquette Cement.

The last three are of M E Leming Lumber Company, another industry served by the Frisco.
In the M E Leming Lumber pictures, the last one is of men loading cut lumber on a barge from sluices that carried the wood from the mill down to the river.

In the next to last picture, you can see the sluices.

 

My uncle's collection is limited to the immediate vicinity of Cape Girardeau, within approximately 50 miles.

He also has all the negatives and many glass plates with portraits that were taken in the old studio in Cape. The photographs of the places, buildings, etc. are all printed on 8" x 10" format and displayed in albums for choosing which ones a person might want. The photograph is removed from the album and taken by the individual.

Later my uncle reprints replacements and puts them back in the albums.

 

Here are some pictures that my dad took at Marquette Cement about 1961.

Marquette was a major industry served by the Frisco in Cape.

Note that he caught a trio of Frisco GP7s at the head of a southbound freight, probably No 835, in picture Marquette 1.

He also caught a glimpse of a Marquette composite gondola that was used for coal transfer in-plant.

Marquette 1



In picture Marquette 2, I was tickled that he caught one of their American mobile cranes with a clam-shell bucket unloading gypsum from a P&LE gondola. Also note three Missouri Pacific gondolas loaded with coal.

The kilns were coal-fired, and my father said that they burned three gondolas of coal in a 24 hour period when in full production. Coal came via gondola on the Missouri Pacific or via barge and then was transferred in Marquette Cement owned gondolas.

Marquette 2



In picture Marquette 3, he caught the huge limestone quarry in the background, one of the Missouri Pacific coal gondolas and a pile of powered iron that was used in the cement-making process.

Marquette 3



In the background of pictures Marquette 4 and Marquette 5 is another industry that was served by the Frisco, Federal Materials Corp., formerly Hely Crushed Stone, established 1896.

Also in the lower right of the Marquette 4 and Marquette 5 pictures, you can see the two-axle hoppers that were used to haul gumbo, mud, high in silicates, from the river bottoms to the south of the plant.

The little white build just seen above one of the limestone conveyors is the scale house for weighing railcars inbound or outbound.

Marquette 4



Marquette 5



Just to left of center in picture Marquette 6, just behind the powered iron feed hopper, the gumbo cars were winched up an incline into a mill house where the gumbo was dumped from the cars, and ground up.

When the car was empty, it was allowed to coast back down the incline with the winch cable still attached, through a spring switch into a siding.

A man would ride the car, controlling the brake and would bring the car to a stop. He would then transfer the winch cable to a full car on the adjacent siding.

The gumbo was ground, mixed with crushed limestone and powdered iron, then fed into the approximately 2500 degrees Fahrenheit kiln.

At the bottom end of the kiln the clinkers were then sent by Meade metal conveyors, picture Marquette 11, to blower fed cooling silos. Clinkers were taken from the bottom of the cooling silos, ground and then mixed with gypsum and/or more crushed limestone, ground further and then sent to the holding silos.

My dad's first job was a "scaler", he was the one that controlled the quantities of clinkers, gypsum and limestone mixed together to determine the type of cement being produced. To make cement for mortar, more gypsum was used along with the additional crushed limestone.

Marquette 6



Marquette 11



The building being constructed in Marquette 7, 8, 9, and 10 was a flood loading facility for railroad hopper cars.

Until it was completed, cement went out of the plant in bags loaded in boxcars, five bags high on pallets, was vacuum loaded into tank trucks operated by a company named Schwerman, just beyond the Frisco train in picture Marquette 1 above, or was hauled in Marquette-owned hopper cars on rail to the Mississippi River.

At the river Marquette had a barge loading terminal to load Marquette-owned barges shown in the background of picture Marquette 11 above. Later forced air sent the cement through a pipe out to the river terminal for loading of barges as seen in picture Marquette 12.

Prior to the flood-loader and trucks, ~85% of the cement left the plant on barges.

Marquette 7



Marquette 8



Marquette 9



Marquette 10



Marquette 12



Most of the pictures are of the older dry process cement plant, but picture Marquette 13 is of the newer wet process plant that was built in 1957. The dry process plant was closed in 1969.

Marquette 13



The cement plant began in 1909-1910 as the Cape Girardeau Cement Company and was purchased by Marquette Cement in 1923.

My dad took most of these photographs from the top of sixteen silos that were built in 1923.

Tim Cannon has subsequently shared some additional Marquette photographs. Please see the following link.

http://www.frisco.org/shipit/index.php?threads/cape-girardeau-mo.769/page-8#post-58662

 

Here is a picture from the Mississippi River of Cape Rock.

Cape Rock was a cape that stuck out into the Mississippi River more, at least until the Frisco blasted away a large part of it to make their roadbed northbound out of Cape Girardeau.

This will be the first major layout design element to the far right or north on my layout.

 

Keith,

Better get going on that basement clean up project.

These are great pictures for modeling the on line industries. Interesting structures and weathering ideas.

I cannot wait until you get bench work up, track down and trains start running.

Hope this helps.

Thanks!

Mark

 

Incredible photographs, Keith!

These are some of the best I have ever seen of Marquette in its earlier days. It is also the first time I have seen a good quality photograph of the Healy stone crusher.

I did a lot of forensics trips in that area in the early 1990s after classes at Southeast Missouri State but could never turn up anything worthwhile.

Wish my folks had driven more into downtown by way of South Sprigg Street before they built the "new" plant, but it was just way too bumpy of a ride.

These are a gem for the River Division fans. The plant is almost big enough for a layout of its own. Hmmmm...

Thanks a lot for sharing.

Best Regards,

 

I believe, depending on how I set up my model of Marquette, that it would support at least a part time operator.

There are the movements of the gumbo cars, gondolas with incoming coal, powdered iron, and gypsum, hopper cars to the river terminal, and finally boxcars for loading with bagged cement. Empty hopper and boxcars were stored on a rise and were uncoupled, then ridden downhill into position for loading.

When full, they were pulled off the scales by a winch just enough to get them rolling down a slight incline away from the loading position. Otherwise all car movements were made by Marquette's switcher.

Additionally, my dad says that he remembers that the Marquette switcher would from time to time move up the tracks to Federal Materials and move hopper cars on their sidings. Apparently, they must have had some kind of service agreement but I have not found anyone else or any documentation to support his statement.

My only regret is that he never got a picture of the Marquette GE 45-ton switcher as it was originally painted or the Frisco GE 44-ton SLSF 4 that was leased by Marquette for a period of time.

The 45 tonner was still in service at the plant, now Buzzi Unicem, but is in miserable shape, having been repainted white with blue trim (yuk) by LoneStar when they bought the plant and apparently not touched since.

Update 4/17/2011: The GE 45-ton has been replaced by a newer EMD switcher.

The following are pictures that I took in August 2009.

Photo 1, 2, 3 are of the old GE 45-ton unit.







Photo 2 is looking into the plant from the north.



Photo 3 is the hopper car loading facility that was being built in the previous post.



Photo 4 is the 16 silo group that was built in 1923.



Photo 5 is the newest (3rd) plant on the site.



Photo 6 is the old Marquette office building and testing laboratory.



Photographs 7 and 8 are of the old power plant with coal-fired boilers and steam turbines.

 

Keith,

Great photographs, thanks for posting them!

As an old chemical industry guy, I can really relate to those views.

Love that office building!

Ken

 

I forgot to mention that in post #22 in this thread there are two pictures of Marquette from the river side and from the quarry side.

They are pictures number 8 and 9.

 

I have read about Houck's Cape Girardeau and Southwestern (CG&SW) Railway, Cape Girardeau and Grand Tower (CG&GT) Railroad and Cape Girardeau and Northern (CG&N) but the SM&A is new to me.

I need to brush up on my hometown railroad history!

I had always thought that the depot at the foot of Broadway was for his CGN or CG&SW but that depot and rail yard was a two story stone building off Independence Street near the new Limbaugh Federal Courthouse.

Houck was a busy man.

I wonder why he did not consolidate his Cape Girardeau facilities?

 

Houck, being a lawyer by education, probably felt that it might be easier to retain holdings in railroad companies by keeping them separate to protect the rest if one failed.

Especially ones operating on the financial edge as most early roads did. If one reads enough about his dealings, they will discover that he was a very shrewd man, one with vision, that built a lot upon the failings of others.

He recognized the value of the railroads as a vehicle, pardon the pun, to move people and goods into Southeast Missouri and raw materials out. In many ways he was as important to Southeast Missouri's development as James J. Hill was to the Pacific Northwest, or as Dr. Thomas Durant was to the development of the middle western states.

 

In my middle school days, I did family tree research as a school project and discovered a lot of interesting things.

For instance, my great-grandfather's association with Louis Houck's railroads. As I mentioned earlier in this post, he was a fireman on a number of the Houck lines.

Another interesting thing, is that he and Mr. Houck must have been relatively close because my great-grandfather's family lived on the Houck estate west of Cape for a time.

But one of the strangest things I discovered in interviewing my great-grandfather was that his father was accidently killed by a South Missouri and Arkansas (SM&A) train. The very railroad that my great-grandfather was working for at the time.

I was able to find a Coroner's Inquest report describing the incident, which followed almost exactly what my great-grandfather had told me some years before.

 

A friend of my brother recently gave me a complete photocopied track chart for the River Division from Lindenwood through Memphis to Mineral Wells, TN, M.P. C-499, from 12-31-1987.

It is 33 pages, double-sided. Due to its size, I will forego posting it here.

If anyone wants any section copied to high res jpg, let me know via PM.

 

Some more pictures that I have come across for Cape Girardeau.

1) The first is of Edward Hely Crushed stone around 1904.



2) The second is a view from inside the Marquette quarry about 1950?



3) A Ken McElreath aerial photograph of Marquette during the 1973 flood.

 

Unfortunately, the funicular, although still extant in 1950, would end up being inside an exterior wall on my layout due to orientation of the Marquette property.

It would be neat to have a model shuttling up and down the hill into and out of the quarry.