Commodities for switching along the MP line in Missouri

[Michael Swederska Sr]

I have been using JMRI switch list to operate my MP layout for a couple of years with great fun. It is now time for me to pay more attention to what I am hauling and switching in and out of my locations around the layout.

I model the steam era up to when the fires were dropped in 1955. I have mostly box cars so the commodities would be shipped in them. I do have a few stock cars, covered and open hoppers.

My question for anyone who may want to help me is:
What are the three top commodities for switching to industries along your MP railroad that I might use on mine?

Thank You
Mike S
Youtube channel
Mike S Scale. @mikesscale3149

[Patrick Flory]

My ag branch layout is set in a different locale than yours, the Gulf Coast, but my main boxcar related customers are a co-op warehouse, an oil dealer, and a team track in each community. I also have wood rack cars picking up pulpwood at the team tracks and gondolas going to an off-layout gravel pit.

On a smaller layout I have at our other house, I have these plus a rice elevator and a small foundry. I also found out that up until this era, bulk rock salt was shipped in dedicated wood boxcars, the use of covered hoppers was just about to begin.

And don’t forget to have interchange tracks.

[Patrick Flory]

I forgot to mention that also back home was a mile long Spur that ran down the street to reach some other customers that included a freight house, The municipal water plant, a grocery warehouse, and a very odoriferous hide warehouse that shipped out nasty muskrat hides in dedicated old end-of-service-life box cars unusable for any other purpose

[Patrick Flory]

I’m preparing an article for The Eagle about a the track plan back home in the early 1950’s when I was a child. It was very complicated for a town its size. I’m going to include Sanborn maps which show what I believe to be at least a dozen rail customers in a town that was 20,000 people at the time, a lot of railroad action for a relatively small town. It’s all nearly gone without a trace today, but I remember it all very well and will describe it in a lot of detail.

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g4014nm.g033751952/?sp=1&r=0.032,0.038,1.006,1.218,0

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