Battenfeld Grease & Oil Company

Updated 22 June 2015 with a few minor details on the company history and inbound commodities.

This installment of the Fairgrounds Branch tour examines the Battenfeld Grease & Oil Company, which was spot #327 on the 1972 Map.  Operations began around 1911 and I found this ad from 1924.

J. R. Battenfeld started the company at 3148 S Roanoke Road, which is actually across the street from the Farigrounds Branch, more on that later.  The company was involved in research into lubricating greases beginning in 1938 through 1940 (the time of the documentation).  At least one of their products was 'Tube-A-Kalk', first manufactured around 1949.  From an article about the owner's house, I learned that they made a lot of grease compounds: "... in 1947, his company was one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of grease and oil. Even during the Depression, the company produced 20 million to 30 million pounds of grease a year and supplied more than 1,000 oil companies ...".  It is unclear if all of that production took place at this location, though I have no reason to suspect otherwise.  30 million pounds is about one railcar's or six truckloads' worth of production every weekday.

A service bulletin for Piper Aircraft published in 1982 listed them as a supplier of a lubricating grease for a fuel plug on their airplanes, which confirms the company was still in business then at that date.

Today, there's a more modern-looking office building on the site with a sign that's not for this company.  City permit data indicates that that a significant remodeling took place in 1986, so the company may have folded or moved on around that time.  Interestingly, there is a company of the same name located in the state of New York that claims incorporation in 1939, however, according to a reputable industry source, the association between these two companies is by name only.

Now, about the difference in building location versus rail spur location.  Battenfeld Grease was served by two local railroads: The Frisco from the Fairgrounds Branch and the Missouri-Kansas-Texas (MKT) Railway from a short spur that diverged from their Rosedale Yard (which, interestingly enough, was captive to the Frisco's mainline; the Katy had trackage rights from Paola, KS into Kansas City).

First a map for orientation:

(Click the map above or this link to the current Google Maps view)

On the map, the upside-down "Y"-shaped green lines in the center are the Katy spur, while the brown "S"-curve at right is the Frisco branch.  Battenfeld's plant was in the area outlined in red and across Roanoke Ave in the blue highlighted area was the tank farm.

I've pieced this together from multiple sources of information:

• A topo map from 1971 revealed details about the Katy spur
• Historic Aerials views from 1959, 1966, and 1969
• This photo of the 1951 flood aftermath; the tank farm is at upper left

As for rail service throughout the years, the track with the tank car spots is busy in the late 1950s, less so in the mid-1960s, and, frankly, looks overgrown with weeds in 1969.  The Katy's rail spur has cars on it in all of these photos, so perhaps their product mix shifted from making greases from raw or bulk material to more of a distribution role.  The tank farm was served by the Frisco and the warehouse / manufacturing area was served by the Katy.  Frisco's spur did include on dock spot in addition to five tank car spots, so maybe smaller quantities were shipped from there or other smaller items were received.  The main inbound commodity would have been "base oil" used to make the various greases.

In any event, I'll plausibly be able to include the tank car spot and / or the edge of the tank farm on the model.  It remains to be seen how active this company was at this location in the latter part of the 1970s.

New Page

I recently added a new top-level page to the blog as a starting point for prototype information, chief among them, the location of this industrial spur in the larger world.

Serving The Line

With basic research nearly complete for almost all of the industries on the line, I'm turning my focus to at least one of the modeling aspects of this project: Determining the necessary car fleet to support operations.

This is especially important for me to work out since I'm still heavily considering a change in modeling scales from HO to O (P:48, actually).  Regardless of scale choice, I'll still need the fruits of this thought exercise; if a switch does happen, this will help scope the equipment changeover.

We'll start with the theoretical discussion of each industry, the commodities they handled, and the typical car types that would've been used to service them.  I'll update the table with additional information as I locate suitable products to represent the prototype.

Spot Code	Industry Name	Commodities	Freight Car Types	Models
303	Open	n/a
305	Garfield Team Track	Various	Various
306	Paper Supply Company	Paper	Boxcars
308	Runaround Track	n/a
309	Open	n/a
311	C. E. Schutte Lumber Company	Lumber Building Materials	Boxcars Flatcars
315	Carthage Marble Corporation	Cut Stone	Flatcars Gondolas
319	W. C. Tingle Company	Flooring	Boxcars
326	Pacific Mutual Door Company	Lumber Windows Doors	Boxcars
327	Battenfield Grease & Oil Company	Petroleum Products	Tank Cars
335	Safeway Bakery	Flour	Covered Hoppers (Airslide)
336	Motor Parts Distributors Incorporated	Auto Parts	Boxcars
340	Sherwood Chemical Company	Chemicals	Tank Cars
340A	Union Carbide	No research yet
340B	American Mineral Spirits Company	Chemicals	Tank Cars
341	Southwestern Bell Telephone Company	Bulk Wire Telephone Poles Supplies	Boxcars Flatcars
342	Turner Uni-Drive Company	Gearbox Castings Machined Parts	Boxcars
345	U. S. Engineering	Steel Pipe	Flat Cars Covered Gondolas
348	Swenson Construction Company	Construction Materials	Boxcars Flat Cars
353	Styro Fabricators Incorporated	Polyisocyanurate	Boxcars (Drums)
354	Fred Wolferman Incorporated	Dry Goods Perishables	Insulated Boxcars Refrigerated Boxcars

In the meantime, I'll keep track of a some potential candidate models below:
PFE Reefer (yellow) [Weaver]

Tank Car (Sunoco/Undec) [Weaver]
Insulated Boxcars (GT, L&N, SF) [Atlas]
Standard 50' Boxcars [Atlas]
Modernized 40' Boxcar [Atlas]
Covered Hopper [Atlas]
Flat Car [Atlas]
57' Mechanical Reefer [Lionel]
3 Bay Hopper [Lionel] (MoW service only, no online industry for an open hopper)
70ton Airslide [Atlas]
60' HiCube Boxcar [Atlas]
50' Plug Door Box [Atlas]
60' Auto Parts Box [Atlas]

Swenson Construction Company

In this installment of the tour of the Fairgrounds Branch we're capturing what we can on Swenson Construction Company, which is spot #348 on the 1972 Map.

The last view I've been able to obtain of this location is a 1969 aerial view.  There's a fair amount of rail activity at this spot location, but some of it appears to be potential offspot cars for Sherwood / American Mineral Spirits.  An aerial view 10 years earlier shows pretty much the same layout for the materials yard, but is devoid of rail activity.

Swenson's Construction Company has a lengthy history in Kansas City and was founded in 1906.  Projects that the company has worked on include:

• 1960 KC Star article on I-70 bridge contracts
• Various Other Bridges
• Jackson County Courthouse
• Westport High School
• Kansas City Power & Light Building
• Coca-Cola Building
• 15th Street Stone arch Bridge
• Scottish Rite Temple
• The Kansas City Livestock Exchange (pg. 7)

Swenson's role in and the construction of many of these structures include basic building materials such as concrete and steel.  Given the aerial views that show a relative emptiness of the actual site, it stands to reason then that steel beams, blocks, bricks, and perhaps bagged or bulk cement might've been delivered here or the nearby team tracks for further truck distribution to various construction sites.

I found at least one reference to an employee retirement in 1978, so it seems plausible that Swenson Construction Company can be included on the planned 1970s rendition of the Fairgrounds Branch.  However, this business record indicates that they dissolved their main Missouri operations in December 1972, so some modelers' license might be necessary.  The related record for Kansas just says "withdrawn" but gives no dates.  What is also interesting is the Kansas record is addressed at 3305 TERRACE, KANSAS CITY, MO 64111 which lines up better with an undated but early (given the track layout at the end of the line) Sanborn Map showing that nearly all the property along Terrace St was Swenson Construction and possibly the tracks along there were privately owned.  The Missouri Record lists an address of 3252 Roanoke Rd, Kansas City, MO 64111 (which is currently a business called Crossland Construction) and is further evidence of businesses in this small little area moving around quite a bit as operations changed.

Other fun facts found while searching:

• Mr. Swenson passed in 1946
• Hartzell "Ding" Burton was a subsequent CEO of the business and he passed in January 1970 (obituary).
• Clarence Rupp was construction foreman with the company and worked there until 1978.

Safeway Bakery

This installment of the tour of the Fairgrounds Branch, covers the Safeway Bakery, which is spot #335 on the 1972 Map.

This location is listed as Fairfax Bakery in the 1950 Sanborn reference and confirmed by this 1955 Kansas City Times article to be Safeway Stores subsidiary.

Research for this location was complicated by the fact that the Styro Fabricators business located at the end of the line in 1972 moved to this location sometime before or in 1995, so it took some time to sort out all of the available information the internet had to offer.  The clincher was the plot map showing that there were two Safeway locations on the Fairgrounds Branch.

At least in 1955, this location was primarily a bakery for bread products, so one could expect railcars of flours to be delivered here.  The dock door is obviously from an earlier era when that product arrived bagged in boxcars; it isn't clear if adaptations were made to accommodate the unloading of airslides or other covered hoppers.

Present day pictures for reference:

Overview

Rail Side 

 Dock closeups

 Spur location

Styro Fabricators

This installment of the tour of the Fairgrounds Branch, covers Styro Fabricators, which is spot #353 on the 1972 Map.  Earlier research based mainly on this Sanborn Map shows this location being a warehouse for Safeway Produce, but this is only accurate up through the mid-1950s.


Research on Safeway's history in the greater Kansas City area reveals a hostile takeover from the private equity world in 1986 that led to the divestiture of the Kansas City operations in 1988.  Given that Stryo Fabricators is listed on the 1972 spot map, this particular location apparently outlived its grocery warehouse usefulness long before Safeway retreated from the market.  There's a loose reference in a link on the Safeway Bakery post that indicates a regional radius of 250 miles was served from the bakery and presumably this location as well.

In the target era, we have Styro Fabricators -- a manufacturer of polyisocyanurate pipe insulation.  It isn't clear what scale their operation was at, but the Frisco must have delivered railcar loads of some of the raw materials, perhaps in liquid chemical or granular form.  More research is required, but this may provide an opportunity to spot either tank cars or covered hoppers on this spur  Boxcars of chemical drums is another possibility; especially if the input chemicals had to be blended on site.  Perhaps additionally, they may have originated loads from here, but that seems less likely.

Styro Fabricators must have changed hands or completed the move to 3327 Roanoke Road in 1995, as that's all that is available online, including in the Missouri Secretary of State database.  Since then, the company has evolved into Bradco, which is the current occupant at that location up the street.  It is quite conceivable that the business started out at this original facility (3525 Roanoke Road) and later moved to the 3327 Roanoke building as the former Safeway Bakery property became available.  The extruded pipe insulation that Styro Fabricators produced now appears to be one of Bradco's product lines.

Present day pictures, for reference:

Also uncovered during research is that the present day occupant of 3525 Roanoke Rd is a company called MEDiAHEAD  They've been using that name since 2013 and were formerly known as Colormark which was started in 1990 as a business but possibly only since 2001 at this location.  That would align with Styro Fabricators relocating a few doors north on Roanoke Road and some vacant time.

Fred Wolferman Grocery

This installment of the Fairgrounds Branch tour looks at Fred Wolferman Grocery, which was spot #354 on the 1972 Map.

Unfortunately for this modeler, it seems that this industry was no longer active in my desired target era.  According to this 1986 People Magazine article, their participation in the local Kansas City grocery market ended in 1972.  If that's the case, rail service to this location ended earlier than that as the company wound down operations.  However, this KC History source says the last store was open until 1984.  For this particular property, however, things were likely shaken up or closed down in 1974 as both this Missouri Business Record source and OpenCorporates Database source claim an end date of June 20th in that year.

This 1963 business filing record lists "Fred Wolferman Building Company" as the owner of this property (the address is actually on the east-west Karnes Blvd. that is south of the end of the Fairgrounds Branch).  I suspect that the name change was tied to an internal restructuring of operations (e.g. spinning off assets into separate wholly-owned 'companies').  It could also mean that the usage of this building changed at this time from its original grocery warehouse purposes to a nice building to rent to someone else.

1963 is right between two other references: The 1950 Sanborn map and the 1972 railroad map.  I suppose that since Fred Wolferman was still in business, the Frisco had no reason to change their maps in the ensuing nine years to read anything else, even if they were no longer spotting carloads of groceries or produce there.

With respect to my recreation of this area, a careful selection of time frame will determine if I either have the challenge of modeling an unused warehouse and a rusty siding or exercise some modelers' license and keep Fred Wolferman's alive for a few more years.

While researching this far, I came across several other tidbits of information:

• This property record source indicates that the property was constructed in 1940.
• Universal Color, Inc is associated with the property in 1998.
• Kansas City Poster Display was located there as of early 1990.
• Interestingly. this particular company was in business from 1939 to 2003, but despite the close association of that timeframe to the building's reported construction date, KCPD was located elsewhere as of 1952 so their move to this location was likely in the post-rail service era.

The State Historical Society of Missouri may have some information on the company or this building.  Their website lists a collection of documents for Fred Wolferman, Inc. (record #K0205)

Schutte Lumber Company

This installment of the Fairgrounds Branch tour looks at Schutte Lumber, which was spot #311 on the 1972 Map.


While the lumberyard occupies the same real estate as it traditionally has, rail service has been severely curtailed since it's heyday.  Schutte must have found it more economical to have the Frisco spot cars directly for unloading rather than move material around the yard -- in the days of horse and buggy, who could blame them -- as there were multiple spur tracks to multiple car spots at each of their buildings.

Here's how the grounds appeared as late as 1957; note the myriad of tracks serving many different buildings.

A massive fire nearly destroyed this business in 2003 and likely reshaped it to the shed configuration seen today.  The myriad of rail spurs into nearly every building was reduced to just the two current tracks at the edge of the property.  Based on this independent review, they had rail service as of 2006 and, according to their website they still do, though recent photography from Google (street and aerial) show the tracks in pretty rough shape.

It's not clear if that fire coincided with any retrenchment of the Fairgrounds Branch itself...As mentioned in the Pacific Mutual Door Company post, rail south of Schutte Lumber was gone by 2006.

Modeling of this industry will be very era-dependent and difficult to squeeze onto traditional shelf-style linear benchwork.

American Mineral Spirits / Sherwood Chemical Company

Updated with additional information.

Industry Review continues with a look at spots #340/340B, the American Mineral Spirits Company that until 1964 was known as the Sherwood Chemical Company.  Both company names are listed on the 1972 map which made initial research difficult, but the connection was made with this July 1964 Kansas City Times article that announced the buyout (reproduced here to correct a few OCR defects):

Chemical Firm Sold SHERWOOD & CO.. local marketer and distributor of chemicals and petroleum-based products, yesterday was sold to Pure Oil company for an undisclosed sum. Sherwood will become an affiliate of American Mineral Spirits, a subsidiary of Pure Oil. Sherwood, which was incorporated here in 1946 after a takeover of the Bertram Naphtha company by Arnold A. Sherwood, has assets in excess of a million dollars and does annual business of over 5 million dollars. The company has a tank farm here handling 750,000 gallons of liquids, one in Wichita and one in Denver with a storage of 500,000 gallons each. Sherwood sells alcohol, naphtha, resins, ketones and fiberglass materials in a 6-state area. It had a chemical blending operation for industrial concerns.

According to Boating Magazine in 1960 & 1961, Sherwood & Co. at 3333 Roanoke Rd was a distributor for Hess & Goldsmith fiberglass fabrics and tapes.

Since possibly 1981 or 1984, the 3333 Roanoke Rd site has been used by a combination of:

• a sign and lighting company named Odegard Sign & Lighting; Pitchbook makes the link between Hayben Corp and Odegard, with the latter merged up into Worldwide Energy in 2013
• a metal sign manufacturer named Metallogos

Sherwood Chemical's extensive site spanned both sides of 34th Street with various warehouses (blue and green highlight), docks (orange highlight) and tank storage (red highlight).  The ones outlined in blue hadn't been constructed as of a 1950 Sanborn Map and in the present day, all of the tanks (red highlight, plus others that were scattered on site) have been removed from the site.

The 1972 map also shows tank spots on the east side of Terrace St. (purple highlight).  According to Historic Aerials, in 1959 the extra Sherwod tank site was a concrete block manufacturer (named Concrete Building Units).  This industry is also found on the 1950 Sanborn Map.  By the 1969, though, some buildings are gone and replaced with the Sherwood tanks.  I'd surmise that this expansion was coincident with the aforementioned 1964 merge.  Additional detail can be seen in the 2006 view and I captured the following ground level views to focus on some of the detail for the concrete containment area.

While I was on location in November 2013, I took several additional detailed shots of the Sherwood buildings that remain.

W. C. Tingle Company

Industry Review continues with a look at spot #319, the W. C. Tingle Company.  Based on the company's history, they've dealt entirely in flooring products since 1946.  The company lives on today in a suburban office park and the location at 3033 to 3039 Roanoke Road is now occupied by an electrician.

Regrettably, I didn't take as many pictures of this building as I did of others, so Google Street View is filling in for me on some of the ground-level shots here.  It appears that most of the former dock area has been (attempted to be) filled in to expand the driveway for Carthage Marble (visible in the background).

  

The rail served side of the building consists of a concrete dock and a single door.  I'd presume whatevr they ordered came in boxcars.

There's also some interesting brick detail on the street facade of the building as well.

I've not been able to locate a solid history of when this building changed hands.

U.S. Engineering / Southwestern Bell

Industry Review continues with a look at spots #345 and #341, U. S. Engineering and Southwestern Bell Telephone, respectively.  This one post covers two industries since the buildings are directly adjacent to one another and seem to have only been split this way for a specific time period.

U. S. Engineering is a nationwide mechanical contractor with roots in Germany from 1855 and America from 1893.  Their specialty is in design, construction, and installation of air handling, piping, cooling and heating systems with a heavy emphasis on fabrication at the plant.


This is welcome news for the railroad modeler as the raw materials for their fabrication like rolled steel and piping could've conceivably arrived by rail.  An aerial shot of their facility on Roanoke Road outlines a covered unloading area with rail service from the north and truck docks on the south.  There's clearly the left overs of rail service to this location, including the rail-size gate, rail-car height dock and oversize door.

A ground-level view of the receiving area shows the dock, currently storing piping and other materials a-plenty.  Regular shipments of raw materials or perhaps even specialty components like large chillers and air handling equipment are plausible.

It isn't as evident it these photos, but when I visited in person, it was clear that the dock space in front of the overhead door was a more recent creation, likely filling in the space where railcars once went inside.

The company obtained this building on Roanoke Road in 1957 from Western Electric when they relocated from elsewhere in Kansas City to make room for the freeway (today's I-70/I-670/US-71/[I-49]) interchange.  In 1972, Southwestern Bell Telephone is still shown occupying spot #341 adjacent to the north of U.S. Engineering's new building.  In a Sanborn Map current to 1950, the building is shown as split between SW Bell and Western Electric, which of course were closely related.  Both portions are shown as being constructed in 1927 with the single-story portion just being a garage versus the three story portion listed as a warehouse.  In the 1970s, SW Bell may have still gotten telephone poles or large wire spools delivered here and probably used the garage for their local vehicle fleet.  This view of the west side of the building clearly shows the two different segments.

 A bit more detail of the different structures can be seen in this view from the north.

The building has what appears to be the remnants of an automatic window washer.

In modern times, U. S. Engineering has taken over the entire property.  I've not found a date on when Southwestern Bell vacated.

Turner UniDrive Company

Industry Review continues with a look at spot #342, the Turner UniDrive Company.

The building's physical location corresponds with the one identified on the 1972 track diagram as spot #342, but the industry list shows that spot as "Open".  I presume that's the Frisco's way of saying we don't provide service there any more.

According to the company's history, they've been in this location since 1940.  The business line is industrial gearboxes and transmissions.  In the early years, it is quite conceivable that they received raw stock for machining by rail.  Trucking probably later took over this raw materials delivery, but it's also plausible that rail was still viable for some specialized inbound component or outbound finished assemblies.

The overview shot of the Terrace St. side of the building above reveals where the three rail served dock spots were located and these close-up shots show the detail of the brick work:

The building is built into the hillside and a basement level is accessible from around the south end of the structure:

One certainly gets a feel for the grades involved on this spur -- The main Fairgrounds branch track is just out of view to the left of the photo above and sits about three feet lower at this point.  The upper level track following Terrace St. was immediately to the right of this building and ten feet higher.  These two tracks joined together about four-hundred feet south of where this photo was taken.

I'll close with a few detail shots showing the special brickwork on this structure and the fact that at the southern tip, it isn't very wide.

One final shot showing the relative location of this property to its neighbors.  The docks in the foreground are the remains of an oil dealer that used to have tanks at the upper left (along Terrace St.)

Rehold, Inc has records indicating that this company also may have done business under several different names starting in 1964 and, presumably, ending at or before 2009:

• Associated Machine Company
• Enterprise Machine Company
• Partnership Machine Company
• Quality Machine Company
• Ro-Da-Ga Machine Company
• Ross Machine Company
• W. S. Sitton Machine Company