Hello one and all, I am modeling the Milwaukee Road in a proto-freelance layout Milwaukee Road set up and I am wondering if anyone has some answers to questions about industries that might be found in some Milw. Rd. destination cities and larger towns. I am looking for some more or less unusual industries that I can either kit-bash or create myself, and they can be either flats or full-building sizes.
Cheers!
Chef Jeff Tendick
Sycamore, IL.
Jeff,
Depending on the are of the Milw modeled, you industries can vary quite a bit. I model the Milw in SW Wisconsin and Lead/Zinc mines were common large shippers. Other rural shippers were grain, tobacco.pickle cucumbers, produce packing plants and dairy products like cheese. In bound shipments were the usual coal/fuel oil, machinery and freight house traffic.
Larger ‘urban’ areas had meat packing houses, foundries, heavy manufacturing and of course the beer industry. Janesville has a GM assembly plant, and there was lots of industry in the Fox River region between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Just west of Milwaukee was a huge malting elevator that supplied the beer line.
The 60’s were a declining traffic era for a lot of rail lines. Much of the traffic went to trucks, and rail shipping tended to be ‘car load’ in nature. Unit trains had not really arrived.
Jim
Because of the size of the railroad and the area covered, they served a great variety of industries. As Jim noted, it would be easier to pin down if you knew what part of the railroad you were interested in. The railroad served coal mines and iron ore mines, had important mainline passenger trains, served grain elevators and flour mills, and also several automobile plants. It also served big cities like Minneapolis, St.Paul, Chicago and Seattle, and ran steam, diesel and electric locomotives.
Issues of the Milwaukee Road Historical Society’s magazine that focus on a particular town or city often have wonderful aerial photos that ID each industry giving a good feel for what a normal city or town would have. If the Milwaukee Road interests you, I think you’d want to subscribe anyway and buy back issues.
There is an excellent resource available, a reprint of a Shipper’s Guide – here is the publisher’s description, and the website has a sample page
Rails Unlimited has reprinted the 132-page book listing prototype industries from 1943. The book was produced for the Milwaukee Road and lists each town the line passed through and then listed all the industries of that town, and identified each industry as Milwaukee served, served by another railroad, joint served by Milw and another railroad or a team track customer. The book is divided by commodities, such as “grain dealers”, “refineries”, “ice manufacturers”, “packing Houses” and many more subjects.
http://railsunlimited.ribbonrail.com/Books/shippers.html
There are similar shipper’s guides available from Ted Schnepf - including a Milwaukee Road switching arrangements book from the late 1970s that sounds similar to the Shipper’s Guide.
One way to think of industries on a model railroad is the notion of complimentary industries. So for example, you had stock yards and a slaughter house in downtown Milwaukee years ago. The Milwaukee served them. Those are two rail served industries right there but there is more, all by-products:
While many of the slaiughtered cows were retired dairy herds, some were edible cattle so there were meat packers and ice houses, as well as cold storage. The hides went to tanneries. The tanneries served shoe factories.&n
Thank you very much for the info. Actually my first plan was to model the Milwaukee Road in freelance, when it took over the short C&NW line that ran from Platteville, WI to Galena, IL. I have enough room in the basement to get about 10 scale miles, (It was actually about 20 miles), but we will be moving soon (I don’t want to, but I am jobless, a recent cancer survivor, and without prospects for another job.)
So I decided on something part freelanced, while using the Milwaukee Road engines I love so much, but now based in a city. It could be any city, but I wanted it to resemble the Midwest by type of customers served. Hopefully this layout will fit into a space when we finally have to move.
Again, thanks so much and Cheers!
Thanks, in the reply I have for Jim, I am more or less doing a freelance part on where the place would be, but it is in a city of some sort in the Midwest. I am thinking of an amalgam of Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul, and while not being exactly true to a prototypical scenario, I am looking for industries that would have been served generally by the Milwaukee Road. Your info helps a lot, so again, thank you!
Cheers!
Thanks, dknelson, like the other respondents, you have given me some great ideas and sources I can look at. Also, some of the industries or businesses might be those that are no longer served by the railroad, but would be found close to the rails. I am also thinking some of them might be just background such as flats, or images taken from photos of these industries. Since my layout was to have been three scale miles long, I knew I needed a lot of background to make sure I don’t have just a bunch of blue sky where there should be cityscape.
The old Beer Line and the Milwaukee Road’s lines in Chicago are more or less my inspiration for what I am seeking, but I am not seeking to do this as a strict prototype. As with the other respondents, you info not only gives me a good idea of what to look for, but also places to look. Thank you! Cheers!
Every railroad has a list of customers and the milepost of their location. On the PRR it is called a CT100 and they are on line at Keystone Crossings. Don’t know what other railroads call it but they are out there probably in the appropriate historical society. Since I am a PRR modeler I have the name of every industry on the portion I am modeling as well as location. Further internet searches reveal a lot about the companies that are not major industrial giants.
Although a little old for your period many of these industries were still in business in the 60’s building other items.
This website lists all the factories the government gave contracts to during WWII and what they built at these factories. Very interesting reading in any case.
http://www.heritageresearch.com/ourlibrary/databases/wwii/default.htm
Rick J
Jeff,
I am a large scale modeler with a keen interest in the MILW.
I looked into the Beer Line and found it interesting and would give a fairly wide range of cars and locos that you could use. I think it was in an issue of Garden Railways (a Kalmbach production) that I saw a wonderful indoor model of Jones Island in MIlwaukee. There are quite a few industries there; not to mention the shipping, which you might model.
I believe the model is now in some Club or Museum as the builder sadly is no longer with us.
Jeff,
over on the Garden Railways Forum I have resurrected older posts which relate to Jones Island, Milwaukee. Take a look.
Beer, and anything related to that industry . . . grain, hops, malt, bottles, cans.
Paper, and related cargo: pulp, clay (for coating) pulpwood, scrap paper, etc.
Automobiles, trucks, and related: parts, steel, tires, frames, etc.
Appliances, and related: coil steel.
Heavy machinery (hard to believe but Wisconsin has a higher percentage of its workers in manufacturing than any other state) . . . so . . . anything related to heavy manufacturing . . . steel and other metals in, machinery out.
Agricultural products.
Processed agricultural products
The list goes on
Thank you one and all for your replies and the information you provided. I really appreciate it. My layout is slowly coming along and now that I am cancer-free, I hope to complete it by year’s end! I am incorporating many of the ideas and suggestions provided here. So, again, thank you all!
Cheers!
Chef Jeff
MR had a feature article some years ago about a large scale Jones Island layout built in a basement. Unfortunately the owner had passed on before it was published in MR, but as a memorial the mans wife and friends planned on keeping the layout going.
There have been two Beer Line layouts in MR that I know of. The first one was of course MR’s own sectional layout project, I do believe for 2009. The other was either in an MR issue 2011 or annual special MRP issue or a basement sized layout utilizing shelf-type bench work. I know I have also heard of numerous plans based off the MR sectional layout and self designed Beer Line theme in N scale.
I am looking at a small-to-medium sized HO shelf-type switching layout to fit the spare room in the apartment, and I think I will be taking a look back at the Beer Line.