The layout is still free-lanced, so not every industry reflects an actual industry within the Saint Louis area during the nineteen-seventies. Also, locations of actual industries may appear different from where they really were located.
CITY OF SHREWSBURY
Kroger Company, Bakery Division
This plant provides baked goods which are distributed by truck to Kroger grocery stores. Incoming shipments of flour arrive both in boxcars and sometimes in those new covered hoppers. Molasses and sugar arrive by tank car; yeast and other perishables come in by mechanical reefers. Other supplies (packaging, other ingredients) arrive by boxcar. Locals and visitors delight in the smell of the freshly baked products made here.
COOP Fertilizer
This is a tiny one-car spot customer that somehow receives an entire covered hopper full of fertilizer
product. Loaded boxcars are also received. There must be more plant that’s not visible from track side.
Garvey Grain
Empty grain hoppers and grain-door equipped boxcars are filled with grain here and shipped to larger terminal elevators. Terminal elevators tend to be located in ports, and transfer grain shipments to barges.
I am not aware of any Garvey Elevators within the St. Louis city limits, but there were other ones.
SOULARD NEIGHBORHOOD
Anheuser-Busch Brewery
The actual brewery is located close enough to the Soulard Neighborhood. A lack of Manufacturer Railway motive power has forced me to use Missouri Pacific power to service the brewery on the layout. Breweries such as this one receive a wide variety of shipments. Grain arrives by covered hopper and is distributed into storage silos by the elevator; hops are received in refrigerated boxcars (reefers). Bottles and bottle caps, aluminum for cans, and packaging materials arrive by boxcar. Used bottles and kegs are loaded into boxcars and shipped back to the plant for cleaning and reuse. Diatomaceous earth, a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that can be crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder, is received by covered hopper and stored in the mineral silos. It is used in the filtration process. Fuel for the modeled plant is provided by liquid propane and coal, so these loads are also received by rail.
On the shipping end, the plant ships finished product (lots of beer) by boxcar. For each gallon of beer
produced, about 10 pounds of spent grain are left over. Spent grain is used as a livestock feed
supplement, in composting, and in baking. (More recently it has also seen use as a bio-fuel.) Spent
grain is shipped in bulk in covered hoppers for both fertilizer and feed. Bagged feed is shipped via truck
from this plant.
CARONDELET
U.S. Steel
Located near the confluence of River Des Peres and the Mississippi River, Carondelet was once a thriving industrial district. Two very large Iron Works (Jupiter and Vulcan) employed thousands of workers. A Marine iron works produced numerous ships here.
The principal raw materials for an integrated mill are iron ore, limestone, and coal (or coke). These
materials are charged in batches into a blast furnace where the iron compounds in the ore give up
excess oxygen and become liquid iron. There isn’t enough layout space to represent the receiving of massive iron ore shipments, so we bailed on that. However, our modeled plant does receive coal in coal hoppers and lime loads in covered hoppers, but not in the amount that a prototypical plant would. We’re living in a truncated free-lance dream world here.
The plant also receives boxcars loaded with various materials and supplies, tank cars of diesel fuel to
power the yard goat, and gondolas loaded with tons of rusty old scrap metal. (We recycle here.)
Empty coil cars and gondolas are constantly flowing into the facility, and sent out with loads from the
rolling, pipe, and wire mills located on the property. Slag, which occurs as a molten liquid melt and is a
complex solution of silicates and oxides that solidifies upon cooling, is shipped from the plant in open
hoppers. Other outbound shipments includes bags of various chemical products created as a by-product
of the operation, and tank cars of coal tar, another by-product of production.
Slag is a residue is comprised of minerals such as silica, alumina and titanium from ironsand, as well as
other combinations of calcium and magnesium oxides derived from other raw materials. It is often used
as a road base. With high particle density and hardness, slag has superior wear resistance, which makes
it an excellent aggregate for asphalt concrete. Other applications of slag include rail ballast, soil
conditioner, sewage treatment and even artificial ocean reefs.
Coal tar, a black, sticky liquid thicker than water, is produced when coal is heated in the absence of air, a
process called destructive distillation. Much coal tar is produced by the steel industry as it produces
millions of tons of coke each year to fuel the furnaces used in separating iron from its ores. Uses for
coal tar are numerous, and include everything from industrial electrodes to medicinal shampoos.
Bendix Corporation
This brake production facility receives shipments of steel direct from the mill. Other products received
(mostly by boxcar) at this plant are phenolic resin, fiberglass strand & iron and aluminum oxides. Boxcar
loads of graphite and rubber are also received. Coiled steel is unloaded on the crane track & inside the
structure. Boxcar loads are received at the receiving dock.
(Editing stopped here for the St. Louis Frisco Lines.)
Pillsbury Mills
“Nothin’s as lovin’ as something from the oven”, and there’s always something baking in the oven at
the product testing building; most days you can smell the tantalizing aroma for miles. The shipping part of operations is all we had room to model. Covered hopper loads of flour and sugar are shipped daily, so there’s always the need for empty covered hoppers at the plant. Cake mix, muffin mix, pancake mix, and donut mix is shipped out in boxcars. Crews working the plant like to stop by the test kitchen for free samples whenever working this plant.
OAK HILL
Purina Mills
Purina is the largest customer in this area. Grain is hauled in and milled, and the smell of processing fills
the air for miles around, as dog food and other animal feeds are manufactured. On the receiving side,
the plant also gets boxcar shipments of paper products & other packaging supplies. Various
supplements and other additives are received by both boxcar and tank car. Shipping of products is on
the other side of the plant. Bagged products are loaded into empty boxcars at the shipping dock, while
bulk finished product is loaded into covered hoppers (and sometimes grain-door equipped boxcars).
Unloaded covered hoppers go to the cleaning track before being moved to the bulk shipping track.