Does anyone know if modern era company houses still exist around mining operations or similar ? City Classics and American Model Builders both make kits but neither look to be current era.
Company houses and company towns kind of went out of fashion a long time ago–in a modern context you’re more likely to see things like trailer homes or portable buildings at such a site. There are still places where old “company town” buildings stand–on the northcoast of California, the town of Samoa is still kind of a “company town” dedicated to wood products, as well as the city of Scotia farther inland, with a nearby tree farm and logging operations. The buildings are mostly pre-1930s in appearance, and the City Classics/AMB kits would certainly fill the bill for such structures–any simple wooden house type building would do. They are still inhabited in the modern era, so they wouldn’t be out of place on a modern layout–they’d just look very weathered!
Don’t know too much about the company towns back in Appalachia, but another lumber company-owned town in the West is Potlatch, Idaho. Originally built and owned by the Potlatch Lumber Co. (later Potlatch Forest Industries), the town featured several hundred worker’s homes of essentially identical construction. In the mid-fifties, the company privatized the city and sold the homes to their owners. Today, most of these homes are still lived in, and have each been individualized with different siding, roofing, etc . . . and some now have additions built on. But, when you drive down the street, you can still see that they have been built from the same plan. There’s no reason not to use kits from an earlier era to model a company town in the present day.
Tom
Tom (Potlatcher) is exactly right about the old company houses still being around, but changed. Two great examples that come to mind along the old Clinchfield (Now CSXT) are in the town of Trammel and especially in Dante. The backs of houses crowd right up against the tracks in the small town of Dante.
You can see pictures of these in several books on the Clinchfield and probably on any of the rail images sites online. Just look for shots along CSX in Dante. The houses in Trammel are not near the tracks, but on the road that follows the railroad at a much lower level. I have slides of both these locations, but unfortunately, no way to get them up here.
I’ve also seen many updated company houses located along branchlines of the NS and CSXT.
The houses and even company stores are still out there, some you may not necessarily recognize at first.
Some of the company towns were composed of catalog houses from Sears, Alladin, and other suppliers of catalog homes in the 1920’s through 1940’s. The employer just contracted with Sears, or whomever, to deliver the parts for however many houses they were contemplating building. Since the houses were already designed and all the parts were delivered as one big package, it was easier than doing it themselves. Company carpenters then put the pieces together. Several towns in Indiana, I think it is, were built as company towns using a large number of Sears catalog houses. As mentioned in regard to other towns, these houses were eventually divested by the “company” and sold to their occupants.
-Ed
When the coal mines in Thurber, Texas, closed down, the company sold all the houses in the company town to anyone who would haul them off the property. Even today, there are quite a few “Thurber” houses scattered over about a thousand square miles of central Texas.
As for Thurber itself, it still rates an interchange off I20, but the town has been reduced to little more than a smokestack, an excellent restaurant (housed in an old brick company building,) a rather interesting museum (with a train in the yard) and the mine superintendant’s house. Today it’s hard to believe that Thurber was a major coal mining and brickmaking center with several thousand residents.
Chuck
I am looking at the American Model Builders company houses. I think if I removed the tin roofs and replaced them with shingles, they would look more modern era. Does any have suggestions for how to create a shingle roof ? Does anyone sell the parts in a sheet where I could cut them down to size ?
About 15 years ago I spoted a modern company town from the freeway while traveling through Nevada.
It was about 1/4 mile off the the north side of a freeway interchange that did not appear to serve anyplace else, the streets were laid out in rectileaner blocks. The community was maybe 5 blocks wide x 7-8 blocks long. All the houses, except for a few double wides (probably for management) were identical single wide mobile homes. There was another road from the town, parallel to the freeway, it ran about a mile west to a fenced compound of 3 or 4 trailers.