The Crunden Martin Manufacturing Company is a large, multi-warehouse complex on the corner of Gratiot Street at 1st and 2nd Streets near downtown St. Louis that still stands like the Acropolis along the Mississippi River. Crunden Martin forms the core of Chateau’s Landing, an industrial and restaurant district just south of the famous Gateway Arch.  Originally known as the Crunden-Martin Woodenware Company, the company moved to Chateau’s Landing in 1904.  The company made a huge variety of wood and wicker products; everything from mops to chairs to kitchen ware to buckets and a whole lot more, and expanded rapidly through … Continue reading No. 78: The Crunden Martin Manufacturing Company

I’m brewing up two new posts–one on scenery and one on the new coupler pockets recently released by Smokey Valley and Resin Car Works. Meanwhile I’m excited to write about a factory building that’s still standing in St. Louis–the Benjamin Moore paint factory and warehouse on 2nd and Lafayette.  I ran across this building a few years ago and last year when I was back for St. Louis RPM I was able to photograph it all around in good light. Here is a trackside view of the factory building, looking south down 2nd Street. The factory has been around since … Continue reading No. 77: The Benjamin Moore Factory on 2nd & Lafayette

A few weeks ago I got really frustrated trying to find Sanborn maps for some areas I’ve been researching in St. Louis.  I’ve been trying to assemble material for a couple of blog articles on small layout ideas but have not been able to gather suitable information. In frustration, about three weeks ago, I went back to the US Department of Agriculture website and ordered a complete set of their earliest available aerial photography for the entire St. Louis area.  The process was so easy that I’m disappointed with myself for not doing it much earlier. The USDA site can … Continue reading No. 71: St. Louis Aerial Photography

I am a small-layout fanatic and am always planning small and micro-layouts in my head.  It’s a curse.  The other day I went to a doctor appointment in town and spent 20 minutes planning a switching layout on the coffee table in the waiting room.   As I write this I’m looking at my dining room table…thinking that if I used Code 55 15-inch radius on one end I could get a two-sided switching layout on this thing and… I like the idea of small layouts that can support an operations session of about 30-45 minutes, such as the “RPM … Continue reading No. 56: The Woodward & Tiernan Printing Company

Until recently an interesting factory existed at the small railroad junction town of Salem, Illinois.  In the glory days B&O’s busy St. Louis line and the MP (the former “Mike & Ike”) met and interchanged in Salem.  MP maintained a yard and roundhouse just north of town. The factory in question was the Brown Shoe Company, which was on the B&O a few hundred yards west of the B&O depot.  The Brown Shoe Company had its headquarters and a major plant facility in St. Louis, and smaller, outlying plants in places like Litchfield and Charleston, Illinois and Vincennes, Indiana.  Yes, this is where Buster Brown shoes were made. I am … Continue reading No. 49: The Brown Shoe Company of Salem, Illinois

What does this post have to do with prototype railroad modeling?  Nothing…but I thought you might like seeing something a little different. A few typically cold, overcast and rainy Saturdays ago I visited the railroad museum in Neustadt, Germany, which is about 45 minutes away from my home. I have never been a fan of European railroading but now that I am living in Germany I have taken a little more interest.  Most German railroading today looks like the photo below.  This is the passenger station at Neustadt very near the museum.  Most railroading in Germany is about moving passengers–it is … Continue reading No. 40: Eisenbahnmuseum Neustadt

Probably the most easily recognized box car on the US railroads in the 1950s was the B&O “wagon-top” box car.  Here are a few detail photos of the well-preserved B&O M-53 wagon top car at the B&O Railroad Museum in Baltimore.  I took these photos on a trip through the northeast US in September 2015.   B&O’s series of wagon top cars was very innovative for their time.  The road first rebuilt almost 1,290 M-15 cars of various types to the wagon-top design beginning in 1936.  Later, beginning in 1937, B&O built 2,000 all new cars, class M-53, from the … Continue reading No. 36: Steam Era Freight Cars – B&O M-53

This car is part of the collection at the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. It is one of my favorite prototypes and this car has been nicely restored and placed on display outside the museum roundhouse. The M-27 was an interesting car series. B&O built 2,000 cars in 1926 for automobile service in both 1-1/2 and double door configurations. The cars were built with a 9-foot interior height. During this time freight car design was evolving rapidly, and within a few years these cars were already obsolete for carrying automobiles. The introduction of the Evans auto loader, … Continue reading No. 35: Steam Era Freight Cars – B&O M-27

This is a former NYC box car, probably from NYC 152000-153769, Lot 657-B, rebuilt by Despatch shops in 1936-1937 from one of NYC’s large fleet of single-sheathed box and automobile cars, commonly referred to as “1916 Cars”. Ultimately Central rebuilt about 5,800 of the 1916 cars into box cars and an additional 2,400 cars into automobile cars. The early history of these rebuilds is nicely covered in Ted Culotta’s new series of books, Focus on Freight Cars, Volume 7.  According to Ted, Central rebuilt over 5,800 of the ‘1916’ double sheathed automobile cars into all-steel box cars, featuring indented Murphy … Continue reading No. 23: Steam Era Freight Cars – NYC Rebuilt Box Car