Modeling The Cotton Industry

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

Okay.I’m planning on modeling Northwest Texas and the Southern Panhandle circa May 1959.

Besides the way freight,I’d like to have a modest passenger service,so I’ve narrowed it down to either the now abandoned Dennison-Wichita Falls line on the Katy or the Panhandle&Santa Fe Lubbock-Amarillo line.

Now until the summer of '59,the Katy ran either an RDC3 and when it was in the shop,an FP7 with a Baggage/RPO and a Chair Car.

While the P&SF ran the Eastern Express/West Texas Express from Lubbock to Amarillo where it connected with the San Francisco Chief in Amarillo and the California Special in Lubbock.

Both trains consisted of an E8m;Baggage Express Car;10-6 or 6-6-4 Sleeper and a Chair Car.In Steve Goen’s book"Santa Fe In The Lone Star State",sometimes a’Torpedo Boat’GP7 was subsisted for the E8m.

Now modeling both trains are fairly easy to model.Intermountain used to have an FP7 in the(in)famous"William Deramus Red"scheme and Walthers offers a heavyweight chair car in pullman green,though not in Katy lettering.

However,a quick removal of whatever the road name is and replacing it with MKT decals takes care of that.Now finding a heavyweight Baggage/RPO is a little hard,but if you can find either an Athearn or Rivarossi/IHC version,a quick paint job’d work.

The RDC3 is very easy as Life Like/Walthers has one,though not in MKT scheme.But Oddballs Decals offers Katy decals so a quick repaint and decal would work.

Now the Santa Fe’s very easy.Athearn;ConCor and Walthers all offer the Streamlined Baggage Car in Santa Fe scheme,plus while Athearn offers the chair car lettered for the Santa Fe and Walthers offers a 10-6 and(I think)the 6-6-4 in Santa Fe as well.

While the E8m is kinda hard to find,any Warbonnet Scheme F3/7’ll work.Now getting to the main part of my question.

The main industries in the Texas and Oklahoma Panhandle are Agriculture:Cattle;Cotton and Wheat and Oil and Gas. Now modeling Cattle and Wheat is no problem as

2

First, here’s a previous thread on the topic.

Second - would cotton gins (the structures holding the equipment at least) look all that different from other processing facilities of their era? The E.L. Moore article mentioned in the linked thread was a standard wood-frame building with a covered drive-thru unloading shed that had a “tube” hanging down to represent the vaccuum system to suck up the cotton for processing. And knowning Moore, a hand-lettered sign out front.

By the late 1950s, you could use concrete block or corrugated buildings, not sure if the Butler building construction explemified by Pikestuff would be in general usage by that era.

3

I would model corrugated metal buildings. The cotton would be pressed into bales and shipped in boxcars.

I would also model a cotton seed mill. Cotton seed would be trucked in from the gins. The mill would produce several products:

  • Cotton seed, bagged in boxcars, bulk in covered hoppers
  • Cotton seed meal used as a high grade animal feed, bagged in boxcars, bulk in covered hoppers
  • Cotton seed hulls used as an animal feed filler and landscaping material, bulk in boxcars equipped with grain doors
  • Cotton seed oil in tank cars

The mill would be a large corrugated metal building. If you look at 5th & Pennsylvannia Aves in Pine Bluff, AR or Planters Dr. and Commerce Rd in Pine Bluff, AR there are two cotton seed mills. Gets a little more variety to loading pattern.

4

Here’s a picture of a period cotton bail:

My suggestion for making them would be to use white Styrofoam. Wrap it with brown paper and use black thread for the straps.

5

Here’s a link to a gin/oil mill in SC. Somewhere around here I have some color pictures and drawings I did while in high school back in the 70s before it was torn down. Keep meaning to do a scratchbuild on it. It was still partly in service in the 60s but pretty much shut down by the 70s as best I recall as the area planted less cotton. Overall construction was a mix of brick, wood, and corrugated.

http://www.nationalregister.sc.gov/union/S10817744022/pages/S1081774402226.htm

6

I bought the cotton bails all ready made up and packaged from a hobby shop back in the 1960s and put them into this old Athearn box car at the time. Can’t tell you the manufacture was.

7

Try that picture again.

8

Here are some of my notes of the Cotton Industry for railroad modeling…

Cotton production in US

total 13 2/3 million bales

4 1/4 million

other southern states 6 2/3 million

output to US mills 9 1/2 million bales

&nb

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COTTON INDUSTRY RELATED STRUCTURES

Compress, Belen NewMex pix RailModJournal Apr93 p.10

Compress, , Aransas Compress

(near present ) blt 1928

12’ high concrete walls, 4’ raised clerestories,

16’ firewalls between sections.

Sections 250’ wide, 150-250’ long/section

10

In Indianola, Mississippi, the older part of the structure that houses the current B.B. King museum used to be a cotton gin (indeed, Riley King had worked within that building). It is one of the last gin buildings still standing in the Delta, and is of a “classic” brick design. This is on the Columbus & Greenville RR. I think that the dock on the front of the building in the photo would have been for receiving product from farmers, with the loading dock for the railroad on the back.

Bill