Valley Park sits on the Meramec River at the bottom of Kirkwood Hill. At one time, the Frisco had a hotel, car shops, and an art-deco concrete passenger station located here. The two main tracks converge in Valley Park to single track from both directions to cross the Meramec River. Frisco GP38-2 #468 leads westbound…
Franklin, at milepost 189, was the site of a large yard and trainmaster’s office. The yard facilities included a roundhouse, back shop, water treatment plant, car department, scales, and diesel servicing. Leon Sapp was the MKT Trainmaster for this division around 1970, and according to Leon, the yard here was large but underutilized. Rail was…
Thirteen miles southwest of Marceline is Mendon, in Chariton County. Being a very rural farming community, Mendon was and still is a tiny town, featuring several grain silos, two signal bridges and at once time, a depot. On April 19, 1981, Santa Fe C30-7 # 8025 rushes an eastbound manifest through the signal bridges, headed…
DeSoto is located south of St Louis, and was home to a large car repair shop for the Missouri Pacific, as well as the namesake town of the DeSoto Subdivision. Though previously published in his book “Missouri Pacific Lines in Color” from the early 1990s, the late, great author and photographer Joe G Collias was kind…
While trains 73 & 74 were the only scheduled through freights across the St Louis line, the Rock Island did operate locals in each direction our of Eldon. On the est end, these locals served customers at Union, Owensville, Belle, Meta and Freeburg. GP7 #1205 has a 21-car westbound local in tow near Owensville on…