Hello once again my fellow FRISCO friends. I am modeling a railroad tie creosote coating facility on my 2 1/2 foot by 8 foot diorama. I was wondering if there were any of these types of facilities anywhere on the FRISCO system. I remember when I was working for the railroad, I would pass one often and it was really neat to see the plain wooden bare ties getting dropped into the creosote vats for coating and then get stacked into piles to dry, then get shipped out. I am going to have to scratch build the conveyor that the ties rode on to be dipped, but When it is done it will look really good I think. However, just like everything else, I am modeling it in the 1940's and in the winter time. If anyone has a picture of this type of facility on the FRISCO system can you please post it? Thank you and keep on shiiping it on the FRISCO!
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. That is a very good question. I'm not quite sure if railroad ties were an individual facility or if a lumber mill was contracted out to make them. Stand by while I Google for details...
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. To answer your question, what I found was that railroads either contracted out with a lumber supplier to make the ties in the quantities necessary, or the railroads built there own lumber facilities and made them. The latter being earlier towards the 1900 period. I'm venturing to bet my wages on a good size lumber facility with lots of trees around and stacks upon stacks of ties. Either that or you can make a facility where the railroad brings in raw lumber (trees) and the facility turns them into ties. Check out this web-page. Interesting read. Seems like your 1940 time frame may be a bust. Railroad Tie Preservation and Date Nail History
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. There was a tie plant in Springfield, MO, on the Frisco, but I don't know any details about it. I would like to know more. I plan on modeling at least the storage yard and loading/unloading tracks of this facility. There was also a tie plant in Kansas City near I-70, just west of the Truman Sports Complex. I don't think this plant was served by the Frisco. Don't know who did serve the plant, but the Frisco ran right by the plant, along with the KCS, Mopac and Rock Island. Dale Rush
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. I have to laugh. While I was wrangling through craftsman kits and was looking through Rusty Stumps Scale Models, they had this: The Hacker's Cabin. It's a 1900's tie producing shop. Ma and Pa style. It's neat, and I'd consider adding it to the saw mill/lumber yard I have from Sequoia/DEBEN LLC for interesting conversational piece. Check it out for laughs. Certainly not what you were looking for in 1940, but it couldn't hurt... The Hacker's Cabin Manny
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. Another source of good information, including period pictures. The Railroad Tie Association. Railroad Tie Association
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. The Springfield tie plant ( and welded rail facility ) were located along the Clinton Subdivision near the Springfield West Shops. If you look in the Springfield terminal industrial diagrams, the tie plant is labeled as Kerr-McGee in the diagrams of the west shops. Somewhere I have on VHS a Frisco promotional video which included film of this location. I purchased my copy from the Frisco Museum when it was still in business. The current tie plant in Springfield is located to the east of the Springfield North yard, where I believe the north Springfield shops were located ( when I was living in Springfield, this was the location of BNs Springfield hub center ). Paul
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. Thanks, Paul. I found the Kerr-McGee tie plant on page 33 of the Springfiled industrial diagrams. Looks like it would have been a pretty good sized industry to switch. That would be a great destination for the oak timber that was logged on the Clinton Sub and elsewhere in the Ozarks. Do you know the name of the Frisco promotional VHS? I have the Train Radio on the Frisco VHS. Dale Rush
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. Missouri Heritage Collection can be googled, then search for railroad ties and sawmills also Missouri Digital Heritage Shannon County Film Digitization Project Camera Roll 182 you will find very interesting of how they hand hewed ties
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. It's called "Trees to Tracks". I found my copy. Now the question is how to get this from VHS to digital.... Paul
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. I have already converted my copy to DVD. If anyone is interested I can make copies.
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. Here's an aerial view from the 1930's... http://www.frisco.org/vb/showthread...ops-a-different-perspective&p=12044#post12044
Re: RAILROAD TIE FACILITY. The Missouri Department of Conservation has a DVD for sale ($10) that includes three short documentaries about forests and logging in the Ozarks. http://www.mdcnatureshop.com/home.php?cat=142 Stamp of Character, subtitled From Trees to Tracks, is one of them. This may be a modern re-edit of older footage. It includes a lot of black-and-white footage of the TJ Moss Tie Company's operations. As the subtitle suggests, it covers everything from cutting the tree to loading the finished crossties onto railroad cars. There's substantial coverage of how ties that were floated down the river were loaded onto railcars, and of the operation of the tie-treating facility in East St. Louis. This includes footage of the facility's standard-gauge steam cranes and its 2-foot gauge plant railway, with Davenport tank engines busily shoving rakes of four-wheeled cars in and out of treatment ovens. This is interspersed with present-day (2004) interviews with people who worked in the business. It's not Frisco-specific, but it's immensely valuable for anyone interested in how the crosstie business worked in the early 20th century. The other documentaries on the DVD include "Forests for the Future" and "Grandin: the big mill and tall timber." The latter is of great interest to anyone modeling logging operations in the Ozarks. It focuses on the Missouri Land & Lumber Company's operations in and around Grandin, Mo. This was the primary reason for the construction of the Current River Railroad, later the Current River branch of the Frisco. Lots of photos of the sawmills, the felling crews in the forests, and the logging "trams" that hauled the logs to the mill. I spotted a Heisler, a typical logging 2-6-2, and what appeared to be a very unusual 2-6-0T, as well as a Frisco tenwheeler or two. Also some discussion of log-loading at Chicopee, where logs floated down the river were fished out and reloaded on flatcars for transport to the mill. A hell of a deal for $10 if you're interested in Ozarks logging history. Bradley A. SCott
Soooo, I was doing the Google thing looking for something completely different and ran across this tie yard. From the NARA site, it showed being located on the north side of Birch Tree, MO. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/..._Tie_Concentration_Yards_-_NARA_-_2129632.jpg
That is a neat one, you don't see every day. Most of the tie plants, I have seen, which isn't very many, had narrow gage tracks for the cars going into the treating (Vat) area. Bill
For years, one of the largest employers in Hugo (OK) was the American Creosoting Company. This plant annually treated 300,000 or more ties for the Frisco Railway. This plant opened in 1907 and was one of a series of treatment plants owned and operated by the company. The July 19, 1907, issue of The Railway Age had an announcement about the various plants being built by American Creosoting. American Creosoting Company, 600-602 Ellsworth building, Chicago, has under construction eight new creosoting plants. These include plants at Springfield, Mo., and Hugo, IT., for the St. Louis & San Francisco; at Kansas City, Mo., for the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; at Marion, Ill., for the Chicago & Eastern Illinois and the Evansville & Terre Haute. Plants are also being erected by the Columbia Creosoting Company, from which the American Creosoting Company is an outgrowth, at Shirley, Ind., for the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago & St Louis; and at Brainerd, Minn., and Paradise, Minn., for the Northern Pacific. A plant is also being constructed at Bloomington, Ind., for the Chicago. Indianapolis & Louisville by the Indiana Tie & Creosoting Company, which is also controlled by the American Creosoting Company. Each of these plants contains a cylinder 7 feet in diameter and 133 feet long with a capacity of 1,000 ties each. The buildings are all of concrete and steel construction and fireproof throughout. A storage yard with a capacity of 1,500,000 ties is maintained in connection with each plant, together with four miles of narrow-gauge track, electrically operated, and four miles of standard-gauge track. All of the mechanical appliances for these different works are covered by the Lowry patents. These will be among the most modern and up-to-date creosoting plants ever built. Other reports about the plant supplied some additional information. This included that the “plant treats ties for the Frisco Railway Company and telephone poles and fence posts for local consumption” and “Choctaw County supplies a few of the ties but Frisco imports almost all of them from southeastern Arkansas.”
