Rail-Served Customers (updated Jan 2025)
| INDUSTRY | RAILROAD | LOCATION | IMAGE |
|---|---|---|---|
| American Can Company The American Can Company was incorporated in 1901. Headquartered in New York, there were plants located throughout the country, including the one in St. Louis. Raw materials received by rail at our plant include steel coils, coating material for can interiors, and paint products for finishing. Boxcars, gondolas, and tank cars are frequently seen on the industry spur. | MPL | Zone 7-South |  |
| Anheuser-Busch Brewery This renowned Saint Louis brewery receives a wide variety of shipments. Various grains arrive by covered hopper and are then distributed into storage silos by the elevator; 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. 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, and bagged feed is shipped via truck. | MPL | Zone 3 |  |
| Blue Star Ready-Mix Plant receives bulk cement and aggregate, used in concrete production. | MPL | Zone 10 | |
| Coca-Cola Bottling The Coke bottling plant in St. Louis, located on Chouteau Ave, wasn’t a customer of the Missouri Pacific Lines as far as I know. We included it anyway, and put ours in the Zone 7 area for operating interest.. The building is modeled from Walther’s Brook Hill Farm Dairy kit. Our plant receives empty bottles, bottle caps, carbon dioxide gas, and sugar, and other secret ingredients by rail. | MPL | Zone 7-South |  |
| Gateway 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. Instead, our modeled plant receives coal in coal hoppers and lime loads in covered hoppers, but not in the amount that a prototypical plant would. The plant also gets boxcars loaded with various materials and supplies, tank cars of diesel to power the yard goat, and gondolas loaded with tons of rusty old scrap metal. (We recycle here.) Empty coil cars and gondolas flow into the facility, and are 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 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. | MPL | Zone 2 |  |
| Heitz Lumber Co. Inbound shipments of lumber and related building products arrive in boxcars and on flatcars. | MPL | Zone 3 |  |
| Kroger Bakery 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. | MPL | Zone 7-North |  |
| McCormik Tool Co. Not based on a real customer. This industry receives raw materials by boxcar as well as the occasional gondola. | MPL | Zone 5 | |
| MFA Elevator Grain arrives by truck and is shipped out in covered hoppers. | TRRA | Wharf St. |  |
| MFA Feed Mill Various grains and other ingredients arrive by covered hopper and boxcar. Outbound products are shipped by truck. | TRRA | Wharf St. | |
| Midland Metals | MPL | Zone 5 |  |
| Midwest Grain Grain arrives by truck and is shipped out in covered hoppers. | TRRA | Wharf St. |  |
| Nationwide Paper Co. | MPL | Zone 7-North | |
| Ralston-Purina Co. Purina is a large rail customer, with grain hauled in and milled, and the smell of processing filling the air for miles around, as dog food (“puppy chow”) and other animal feeds are manufactured. The plant also receives boxcar shipments of paper products & other packaging supplies. Various supplements and other additives are received by both boxcar and tank car. The shipping side is also busy. Bagged products are loaded into empty boxcars at the shipping dock, while bulk finished product is loaded into covered hoppers. | TRRA | Checkerboard Sq. |  Purina Mills |
| Pillsbury Milling “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 doughnut mix is shipped out in boxcars. Crews working the plant like to stop by the test kitchen for free samples whenever working this plant. The Pillsbury plant in St. Louis was located just north of the downtown area. Present day Carondelet is the real home and headquarters of Italgroni, which mills large quantities of semolina and durum flour at this St. Louis plant. | MPL | Zone 3 |  |
| Quality Beverage Distr. Receives beer and other spirits by boxcar. | MPL | Zone 7-North | |
| River Cement River Cement was located in Mopac’s Zone 2. Using modeler’s license, we relocated River Cement to Zone 10 which was actually the home of Alpha Portland Cement. The plant ships bulk cement in covered hoppers and bagged product in boxcars. | MPL | Zone 10 |  |
| Sulphur Springs Quarry | MPL | Zone 10 |  |
| Walker Seed Co. Walker Seed is a fictitious company named in honor of the late Jim Walker, who frequently operated on this layout. We miss you Jim, but your memory lives on in this model. | MPL | Zone 4 |  |
| Wharf Street Freight Depot | TRRA | Wharf St. |  |
| Westinghouse Electric | MPL | Zone 7-North | |
| Wetterau Wholesale Foods Wetterau went public in 1961 with the sale of 100,000 shares of stock and changed its name to Wetterau Foods Incorporated, but the company’s history goes back to 1867 when young George H. Wetterau left Germany and moved to St. Louis. Reefers and boxcars bring products in and all outbound shipping is done by truck. | MPL | Zone 4 |  |
| Eastern Electric Wire Co. Not much information found about this industry. The protoype was located in Mopac’s Zone 8, and had 2 spurs. | MPL | Zone 2 |