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Steve,
St Louis to Pueblo is a large stretch of railroad, encompassing 7 crew districts in the late ’70’s. Rough count about 10-11 locals and roadswitchers covering this territory. Most of the traffic was overhead, moving between Pueblo, KC and StL. I hope you are trying to select a portion or one subdivision to focus on, otherwise it is close to “boiling the ocean”.
1. For on-line industries, and guessing what “more interesting” translates to, here are the more significant traffic generators for the time period you are looking at…..Starting on the east end at St Louis, and going west:
a. Lime plant at Pacific, MO – switched by the St Louis-Jeff CIty local, probably spent the most time at this location during tour of duty
b. Union Electric coal-fired power plant Labadie, MO – received unit trains of Illinois coal from the east, and Utah and Wyoming coal from the west
c. Central Electric Co-op coal-fired power plant Chamois, MO – a small plant, received blocks of cars set out by the local and/or a through train
d. Jeff City had a fascinating group of industries along the remnant of the Bagnell Branch.
West of Jeff City, we have two mainlines, Sedalia Sub and River Sub, that were mostly directional running with some exceptions.
e. Sedalia featured the MP shop complex, and a Kelsey-Hayes steel-wheel plant (opened 1978).
f. General Motors auto distribution ramp at Lee’s Summit
g. Allis-Chalmers equipment plant on the Pixley Spur in Independence.
h. Over on the River Sub, Lake City Army Ammunition Plant at Lake City
In Kansas City proper, after turning the corner at Southwest Jct from the Sedalia/River Subs onto the Kansas City Sub…
i. Armco Steel plant. Not a large integrated plant with blast furnaces, but shipped many cars/day of grinding balls, grinding rods, wire rod, railroad spikes, and bar stock.
j. General Motors Assembly Plant at Leeds, Missouri. Large enough to have its own support yard and multiple switch jobs per shift.In Kansas, MP served a salt mine on a branch out of Geneseo, but otherwise it was all about grain gathering in terms of volume. A lot of grain trains originated in Salina, directly on the MP from a local elevator, and also interchanged from UP.
Crossing the border into Colorado, MP served the Transportation Technology Center and the Pueblo Army Depot near Avondale. The TTCI featured large loops of track for testing rail equipment, and MP often moved locomotives and rolling stock to/from TTCI as railroads would loan equipment to the facility for testing.
2. Industry track diagrams were assembled into ZTS books (Zone-Track-Spot). These diagrams were mostly hand-drawn and not to scale, but showed track arrangements and often gave track capacity or number of spots. They show up from time to time on Ebay, and the MPHS archives crew is working to digitize these books. If you narrow your search down to a certain area, I am sure we can come up with diagrams among the forum group.
5. The hotshot auto train between St Louis and Pueblo was the CSP (Chicago-St Louis-Pueblo). During certain months of the year, MP also hosted the FFT (Ford Fast Train) between Kansas City and Pueblo. After 1981, MP originated the FFT at St Louis in its waning years. There were several trains handling auto traffic between St Louis and KC.
Also interesting that UP 2429 is on both trains. Makes me wonder if these were the #174 (northbound) and #173 (southbound) trains that ran KC-St Joseph in the early 1980’s. The northbound was either 174 or an empty grain train, and the power turned to 173 with the Conrail unit added.
I found a tidbit of info while perusing an excellent piece on railroad logos entitled “On The Mark: The History and Symbolism of Railroad Emblems” by James A. Ward, in Issue 153 of R&LHS Railroad History, Autumn 1985.
Page 69
“When the Missouri Pacific decided to update its buzzsaw in 1969, its designer, D’Arcy Advertising Company, melded tradition with novelty…”
He goes on to describe the screaming eagle/buzzsaw logo, then ends with this:
“Though the new emblem first appeared on the MoP’s 1969 annual report, not until five years later was it stenciled on a locomotive.”The footnote for this paragraph: “W.A. Fussner, Director of Special Projects and Public Relations, Union Pacific System, to author, 1 February 1985; de Vries, Dictionary, pp. 152-54.”
Yes Kevin, same Brandon.
This is good info….The Eagle has not shown up in Arizona either. I assumed from the first post that the issue was “newly received”, but seems it has been “out for a while”.
Search the thread I started in this same section entitled “Morley Bridge incident”.
When & where: Morley, LA, on September 17, 1973
I do not know what position 630 was in when the pair of Geeps went into the canal.
The video description says this footage was shot around Claremore (OK) which accounts for the Frisco action, and also on the southern Illinois joint line, which would be the MP-SSW Dupo-Illmo route.
The red & white 3-silo car is a Halliburton car for transporting dry bulk ingredients for oil well drilling mud.
There was and is no restriction on having tank cars next to a caboose…the restriction is if cars contain certain hazardous materials.
This is indeed great footage….kudos to the filmographer for capturing freight cars as well as locomotives.
Jim, Charlie’s answer of “KL” and “KS” is the best solution if you want generic symbols that fit MP’s train symbol scheme in 1980. Renee provided mostly post-merger 4- and 5-character symbols that came about around 1986, with a few 3-character symbols that dated from 1983 (KNZ) and 1978 (UMS).
In 1980, there were 3 regular trains to Little Rock: KL, KLY, and BKL. BKL was a Union Pacific runthrough from North Platte Bailey Yard. It did stop in Neff Yard to swap blocks, and often featured UP pool power. KL and KLY originated at Neff, with KL running via Coffeyville and KLY running via the White River Route. “Y” designated a 2nd schedule in the service plan between the same two cities.
MP had a fleet of KC-St Louis trains. In 1980 that included KG, KSC, BKG, KS & KSY.
Should be:
Missouri Pacific Railroad
Equipment Trust Series
Chemical Bank Trustee
Owner and LessorPat – I was told the bridge structure was significantly damaged, and it was rebuilt. To what extent I do not know.
I do not really want to continue recounting second-hand info on this incident, I wish we could drum up some DeQuincy Division railroaders. I will say that Bill’s recollection of the story was what I was told was for “public consumption”; the internal investigation was apparently much more damaging relative to the bridge tender; several employees at Addis yard saw the train leave on a green signal, which was the approach for the bridge; and a power failure would cause the signals to “fail safe” to red or dark. It is all of these details that have intrigued me for years and why I long to find some internal MP documentation regarding this incident.
Patrick – that is interesting….I did a few years in Beaumont, TX, and explored around New Iberia. I had to dig out my maps and find that area and the rail route. Love the rails through bayous and drawbridges.
Charlie – those ICC reports online are way incomplete, I perhaps can find 1 out of 10 accidents when researching. I have done online searches of the area newspapers for Ruston, Monroe, Baton Rouge, etc. and have only found a short article published the Wednesday after the Morley wreck. I am sure something could probably be found in their hardcopy archives.
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