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.

Setting the Era

Conversations with local enthusiasts who had previously toured the line and done other research revealed that the majority of rail service ended soon after a derailment near the south end of the line in the early 1980s (1983?).  The report is that a car was destined for Turner UniDrive Company.  My speculation is that new owner Burlington Northern was probably looking for a good reason to curtail service.

At least Schutte Lumber continued to receive rail service into the mid-90s.  As reported by local observers, they received shipments of large beams or trusses to the spurs on the southeastern edge of the property.  This required some amount of tail track that crossed 31st street.  It isn't yet clear when service to Pacific Mutual Door or other industries in the middle section ended.

This sets an upper limit on prototype modeling.  Of course, one must choose between one side or the other of the 21st of April 1980 -- either the beginning or end of time, or -- simply put -- whether to use orange or green with the white:

Photo Credits:

Frisco #306, a Carl Nelson shot borrowed from Frisco.org

BN #154, a Jim Shepard photo borrowed from the Don Ross Collection

I've always been interested in the 1970s era of railroading as that's when things started to get "interesting".  There were a handful of developments in the 1960s, but larger railcars were the norm in this decade and the what I call the "great oxide red / brown fleet" of the 1950s and earlier was disappearing.  It was also a challenging time as several upheavals took place: Amtrak, Conrail, to name a few.  Deferred maintenance was increasing.

Post-Staggers Act railroading in the early 1980s is also appealing.  From a model perspective, its a bit easier to find appropriate rolling stock, but in the case of this branch line and the industries it served, it was about to be history as trucks really began to take over.

Fairgrounds Branch in 1930

While searching for more information on various industries, I came across this aerial photograph from the 1930's.  The focus is on Southwest Boulevard and clearly visible is the crossing of it by the Fairgrounds Branch to serve Schutte Lumber.

I can't post the picture directly here due to copyright, but you'll be able to view it on the Missouri Valley Special Collections page linked here: http://www.kchistory.org/u?/Curtiss,197

A few notes on key elements of the photo:

• The Frisco mainline curves from upper left to lower left.
• Just left of dead center is a team track area for the Frisco
• On the right edge just below center, the X-shaped tracks serving the various Schutte unloading areas can be seen among the many piles of lumber.  Business was good in this era.

Enjoy if you visit!

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