Missouri, Kansas, & Texas Railroad along the Missouri River by Cathead - 1/87 (HO) scale - model railroad with steamboat

[Cathead]

While I'm most known on MSW for my scratch-built Missouri River steamboats (see signature links), my interest in transportation along the Missouri River extends to that great rival of river traffic, railroads. So I'm taking a break from steamboat modeling to build at least one module of a possibly larger model railroad depicting the route of the Missouri, Kansas, & Texas railroad along the Missouri River valley in central Missouri, ca. 1900, complete with at least one river scene featuring a contemporary steamboat.

 

MK&T passenger train along the Missouri River, ca. 1900 (State Historical Society of Missouri):

This will be a typical build for me in that it'll be laced with details of local history and geography that set a context for the models. As a former model railroader who transitioned to shipbuilding for a while, I'm finding that I miss the ability to set models in their full context. Most ship models end up sitting passively on a shelf, while a model railroad allows one to actually operate the model realistically through an entire landscape. As a geologist and naturalist who's lived in this area for almost 20 years, I have a strong connection to the Missouri River valley, having extensive experience hiking among its hills, birding within its floodplain, biking along its corridor, and paddling beneath its bluffs.

 

Mrs. Cathead on a shared river trip; these are the same bluffs shown in the next photo below:

 

The Missouri River's route through central Missouri is far more scenic than outsiders with a "flatland" view of the Midwest might suspect. The river follows a 1-2 mile wide gorge lined by limestone and dolomite bluffs towering up to 300 feet over the floodplain. Rail lines built along this corridor were forced to hug the valley walls by the huge river's constant meandering, making their routes often look like overdone model railroads with straight bluffs absolutely dwarfing the trains below. The Missouri Pacific built up the valley's south side in the mid-19th century, while the MK&T (more commonly called the Katy) built down the north side in the 1890s.

 

MK&T main line squeezed between tall limestone bluffs and the Missouri River, ca. 1912, same bluffs as above (State Historical Society of Missouri):

This project has been in the planning stage for several years, and directly influenced my last steamboat build, the Peerless, a small steamboat that operated on the lower Missouri River between St. Louis and the small central Missouri town of Rocheport. I built that model at the common model railroading scale of 1:87 (HO) to allow for its possible future inclusion on a diorama or layout depicting this region.

 

Historic photo of Peerless (State Historical Society of Missouri) and model version for comparison:

The immediate focus of this build is the scenic river town of Rocheport, framed to west and east by some of the most dramatic bluffs anywhere along the lower Missouri, and home of the only tunnel anywhere on the Katy system. This was a major river port in the pre-Civil-War era, and was the upriver home port for Peerless during its 1893-1903 operations on the river. The Katy built through Rocheport in the mid-1890s, meaning the two co-existed for nearly a decade, the perfect hook for a steamboat-and-railroad enthusiast.

 

Rocheport in the early 1900s, as seen from bluff tops to east and west (State Historical Society of Missouri):

Today, Rocheport is a popular tourist town, known for its B&Bs and nearby vineyards, and brought to prominence by its central location along the 240-mile Katy Trail. This is Missouri's cross-state rail trail that follows the old MK&T line (abandoned in the 1980s), and is the longest continuous rail trail in the country. I've cycled the entire length, but like many people, am always drawn back to Rocheport's incomparable scenic setting. The trail also makes modeling the MK&T in this area particularly attractive, since the right-of-way is unusually accessible!

 

Rocheport tunnel and river bluffs (same bluffs as other photos) along the modern Katy Trail:

There's a lot more background information to share, and construction has already started, so this log will work to catch up on past progress while continuing to explain the design, purpose, and context of the project. It's going to be wordy for a while but there's also lots of neat imagery to share. I didn't initially intend to track this with a build log, looking forward to being freed from the tyranny of photography, writing, and reporting. But I'm finding that I miss the community that develops around a build, and I think there's a really neat historical story to tell. And writing about one's work can sometimes help clarify or altering thinking about a project in ways that being too lone-wolf can miss. So welcome aboard!

 

One more historic photo, and three shots of the layout underway.

 

 

 

Edited March 1 by Cathead

[JacquesCousteau]

Looks like an interesting build, and a good home for the Peerless!

[Paul Le Wol]

Eric, this is going to be a great project to follow. Three of my favorite things; boats, trains, and boats with trains! You know it’s funny that I’ve heard that old Taj Mahal song about the Katy hundreds of times but never realized what it was about until after reading your introduction. Looking forward to this.

[Keith Black]

Eric, thank you for sharing this project. I look forward to following this epic journey. 

 

 What is the layout length? 

[Cathead]

Keith, I'll give a lot more details of the full layout plan in a future post, but the Rocheport section measures about 2'x11'.

[Canute]

Great start, Eric. I'll be following this project.

[Literalman]

I don't think it was mentioned in the posts above, but Katy was a nickname for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas, based on the KT part of the initials. Maybe this was stated in plain sight and I just didn't notice …

[Cathead]

I mentioned "Katy" as the railroad's nickname but didn't give the backstory. The official story is that the company's stock symbol was KT and that's where the nickname came from, but I personally think it also just developed organically because it's so obvious.

[lraymo]

Eric, this is great history along with your project, and I'm glad you decided to share it!  I've been to Rocheport several times to ride the Katy trail (but I've never done the whole thing! I'm impressed with anyone who's done that!)

Love your layout, and looking forward to watching the build!

[Cathead]

There's so many different paths I could take in starting to catch you all up on the context for this project that it's a bit overwhelming. Do I focus on the model-railroad-oriented process of track planning, how we design the track layout to allow realistic operations? Do I focus on more historical details of the railroad in general and Rocheport in particular? Do I focus on building the benchwork and early scenery forms? 

 

All of that takes time to write up, and you all are here for the modeling, so let's start with a simpler narrative, the current building I'm working on. This is a really interesting-looking structure seen behind the depot in only two photographs that I've found, shown below with zoomed-on crops.

The front part of this building is clearly an early grain elevator, with a loading spout set to extend down to the door of a boxcar on that spur. This is the era when grain was shipped in boxcars with planks nailed over their open doors. But what's going on with that huge building attached behind the elevator, with its massive interior, and even weirder, a wide ramp leading up to a second-story "porch"? In the first photo (1898), the ramp and porch are uncovered, while by the second photo, I think in the 19-teens, there's a roof over that whole thing.

 

I finally got the answer from a very helpful contact at the Katy Railroad Historical Society. While the front part is indeed a grain elevator, the back part is a massive hay barn. The Katy did a serious business in shipping Texas cattle north, and built a series of huge barns to store the hay needed to feed these cattle on their journey to processors in Kansas City, St. Louis, and Chicago. So that's a hay barn, and the ramp allows loaded hay wagons to drive up to the second floor and deliver hay into the barn, probably through the doors you see in the first (uncovered photos). Very cool! You'll see Rocheport's small stock yard in the lower right of the wider-view photo, just down the street from the hay barn. This also shows the local economic impact a railroad could have; even a small town like Rocheport would benefit from this major source of local farm revenue coming from the railroad.

 

I wish I had room to model this building in its entirety, but then the scene would extend way too far back. As it is, I can only fit a narrow part against the backdrop. So I did some estimated measurements, using the usefully placed boxcar in one photo for scale, and came up with a representative design that fit my space. I then built a cardstock mockup to see how it looked visually behind the depot (that project is a different topic).

 

This told me that my original elevator tower looked a little too squat, so I redrew my plans to make it a bit narrower and slightly taller. I also removed the loading dock I'd somewhat speculatively placed there, as I don't like the look and it doesn't fit the curve of the siding.

 

Once I'd redrawn my plans, I started building. This is really straightforward after years of complicated shipbuilding curves; lots of nice straight walls and square corners. I'm using pre-scribed siding and styrene castings for doors. Here are two quick photos of the progress so far.

 

That's all I've got for now. I'll keep following up as I work on this. One fun question is what those two doors way up on the elevator's face are for? They're clearly visible in the photo, so I included them, but danged if I can figure them out.

 

 

 

 

[Keith Black]

2 hours ago, Cathead said:

One fun question is what those two doors way up on the elevator's face are for? They're clearly visible in the photo, so I included them, but danged if I can figure them out.

 Eric, historical photos of grain elevators is my latest rabbit hole. It's a neat subject, thanks. High up doors seemed fairly common, this image is just one of many, the why of them is a mystery.  

 

[Paul Le Wol]

26 minutes ago, Keith Black said:

 Eric, historical photos of grain elevators is my latest rabbit hole. It's a neat subject, thanks. High up doors seemed fairly common, this image is just one of many, the why of them is a mystery.  

Perhaps they were used to ventilate dust and heat to reduce the risk of explosion while the elevator was operating.

[Cathead]

Paul, that occurred to me after seeing Keith's photo, and my first thought was why doors and not just large windows? But then it occurred to me that doors are easier to open when needed and seal when not, without the added expense and fuss of glass if the light isn't needed.

 

I still remember my high school physics teacher showing us how to make a cannon out of nothing but a cardboard tube, sifted flour, and a match. Good stuff. So I bet you're right.

[Cathead]

More progress on the elevator hay barn, which is now a unified structure:

I scored a pattern of plank ends into the elevator's siding; the goal is for them to show up faintly after painting, just enough to suggest this wasn't built with 50' planks. In writing this I realized I need to do this on the hay barn's front wall, too.

 

This doesn't look all that different from the last photo, but there's a lot of work you can't see, like internal bracing (especially within the elevator), and getting all the constituent parts lined up into a nice whole.

 

Next will be attaching about 1" of depth to the hay barn and setting up whatever roof framing I want. At that point it's ready for airbrushing, followed by roofing. If you're wondering, this structure would have been fairly new in 1900, so the goal is for it to look well-kept with just enough weathering to not look toylike. Somewhat different from the usual rough neglect we modelers often like our working models to have. So no missing planks or shingles, no peeling paint, no repair patches, etc.

 

By the way, that brief preceding conversation about what the upper doors are for...that's exactly why I decided to go ahead with a build log. There's just such a richer experience to building models when you can benefit from others' insights and questions. That exchange didn't even change the model, but it makes the model richer to understand more about the prototype. Thank you!

Edited March 6 by Cathead

[Keith Black]

8 hours ago, Cathead said:

Thank you!

 No, Eric, thank you! Thank you for creating this build log, build log enrichment flows in both directions. 

 

 The grain elevator is coming along nicely. 

Edited March 6 by Keith Black

[pennytimeline]

This is so cool, I model planes, trains and automobiles, to quote the motion picture as well as armor and ships.  So many models, so little time!

[lraymo]

Eric, this history is fascinating!  It inspired me to ask Google what the doors were for.  This is what I found:

"Grain elevators have doors high up on the top, also called the "headhouse", because this is where the grain is loaded into the storage bins, allowing for the most efficient way to funnel the grain from trucks or railcars directly into the elevator's vertical storage system using gravity to move the grain down into the bins."

 

Not sure if you can count "Google" as actual research, but it made for interesting reading!

 

Your model is looking great!

 

 

 

[Canute]

Could also be for hoisting new equipment up to the top of that tower, Sheaves and duct work break occasionally so they plan ahead for replacements. And the whole place was dusty from grain.

[Cathead]

Ken, I did think about that. But I feel like normally those sorts of access doors are on the other wall, where the roof peaks. I've seen those in many historic mill structures, for example, and they're always as high up as they can be, probably so they can use the central roof beam for strength. Barns are the same way; you always see the extended hay loft access on the high side. Whereas this structure has those doors on the low wall below the eaves of the roof, not on the high side. So I dunno. But there isn't one on that other side, so maybe you're right?

 

 

[Cathead]

Lynn, was that quote you provided generated by the Google AI? It seems a little off to me. Grain isn't loaded into elevators through doors at the top of the headhouse. It's input into the elevator structure at or near ground level and then hoisted up by machinery in the head house, where it's then distributed by gravity into various storage compartments. The quote given sounds like a classic AI hallucination to me, misunderstanding what it's "reading".

 

In other words, there's no way those doors on this elevator were how the grain got into the elevator: there's no mechanism by which the grain would be raised up outside the structure, then poured through those doors into the structure. Instead, there would have been a loading point somewhere where farmers dumped their grain into a chute/hopper that then used internal elevator mechanisms to hoist the grain up to the top of the tower (using machinery in the headhouse), then the grain would have been directed into one or more vertical bins inside the structure, and from there it would have been gravity-fed into boxcars using the little spout you can see on the side of the buildings. 

 

I'm definitely not sure where the farmers' loading point was on this structure, given the photographic evidence, but I'm not too worried about it as I'm following what I can see pretty closely and the most important detail is how the grain gets into the boxcars (and that's clear).

[lraymo]

47 minutes ago, Cathead said:

was that quote you provided generated by the Google AI?

well, as a matter of fact, it DID say it was generated by Google AI!  Oops!  I wasn't sure what it was trying to say, but thought maybe I just didn't understand.  Seems like it was AI that didn't understand!  (I won't fall for that again!)

[Egilman]

42 minutes ago, Cathead said:

I'm definitely not sure where the farmers' loading point was on this structure, given the photographic evidence, but I'm not too worried about it as I'm following what I can see pretty closely and the most important detail is how the grain gets into the boxcars (and that's clear).

Usually they have a platform that allow the grain to be shoveled off the wagons into a hopper that gravity feeds the elevator... The elevator, (think bucket chain hoist) lifts the grain into the top of the silo which is gravity fed into the hopper cars when loading the train... The doors, (usually two) were there for elevator chain replacement, these elevators were used continuously during harvest season 24/7... The chain lifts would wear out in a single season in an area of large farms...  There was equipment in the machinery room to effect the swapping of the lift chains, and it could be done in two days... They would actually use grain loaded in the buckets to balance the weight so it was a simple low tech hand operation to change them... Otherwise, the doors remained closed at all times.... This is why you don't see them open in period pics... (usually taken during harvest season when the elevator is in operation)

 

EG

[Cathead]

EG, that makes a ton of sense and also explains the paired doors and their location on that wall. Awesome!

 

I'm still not sure where the wagon unloading would have taken place, as the ramp up to the hay barn seems to block the right wall of the elevator, the big shed blocks the left wall (as viewed from the tracks), and the hay barn blocks the rear.

[Rik Thistle]

Eric,

 

On my Dad's farm (late 1950s/early 1960s) I vaguely remember the grain from the fields being lifted up* in to the first floor (UK terminology) drying loft of one of the large farm buildings where it was then spread out on the wooden floor. Rats and mice were always a problem hence plenty of farm cats.

 

Once the grain was dry, it was then put in to sacks and slid down a short wooden slide fitted to the bottom of one of the first floor 'doors' onto the trailer positioned underneath where the sacks were stacked up.

 

*I can't recall how the grain was first lifted up to the drying floor.... racking my memory but nothing yet. As Egilman says, a bucket chain lift could have been used but I don't recall seeing that. I know later in the farm's history there was a Lister bale/sack elevator used for moving heavy items up (and down?).  Perhaps something like what is depicted here was used in the earlier days....https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo/straw-elevator.html?sortBy=relevant .... but handling loose grain would still need some kind of container to carry it up there. Maybe the workers carried grain filled containers on their back up the stairs.

 

Richard

 

PS: Page 37.... https://wshc.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Wilts-Farmsteads-Char-Statement-2017pt3-504.pdf   seems to imply that, in the UK, in the  18th/19th century the grain was lifted up in sacks.

[FriedClams]

Great start to an interesting project, Eric.  Looking forward to following along.

 

Gary

[mtaylor]

I'm in for sure.  Brings back memories from decades ago of biking the Katy Trial (if I remember right). We'd start in St. Charles and go from there for maybe 4-6 hours and then turn around and go back.   Beautiful.

[wefalck]

Well, good for those out in the Far West, who have the space for such scenic settings. We humble urban dwellers have to make do with dioramas or scenes in glass boxes 😞

 

Where did the power for the grain-elevator come from? Manual labour? In windmills power is taken off the 'main shaft' to drive a winch with which the sacks were lifted to the highest level from which they migrated by gravity through the processing.

 

How would be the grain delivered to the silo, in sacks or loose? Threshing machines in Europe were designed to output into sacks.

 

Perhaps the ramp served both, the hay-barn and the grain-silo. With the carts going half-way up, this would save a lot of labour/energy. The carts would then be unloades somewhere inside the building.

 

Ventilation doors were also my first thought, to prevent dust explosions and to make also the working atmosphere in this enclosed space a bit more comfortable.

 

[Rik Thistle]

Threshing machines in Europe were designed to output into sacks.

 

That rings a bell. I think a tractor and trailer* then carried the sacks from the thresher to the drying building. And then I can sorta recall the labourers taking the sacks on their backs up the stairs to the drying floor where the grain was then spread out.

 

I now do remember there being neat piles of sacks stored in that building.  Sacks played a big part in farm life.

 

Richard

 

*Again my memory is a bit fuzzy. Threshing was carried out near the farm buildings so it is possible there was no need for tractor/trailer - rather the labourers walked the short distance to the building with the sacks on their back, or perhaps used a sack trolley -  I do remember there being a few sack trolleys about the farm.

[wefalck]

OK, this is now a bit of thread drift, but would concern the 'input' side of the grain-elevator.

 

Since around the middle of the 19th century threshing was typically done by contractors, who would travel around the country with their portable steam-engines or their agricultural steam-engines and the the threshing machine in tow. This was, of course, before the days of combine-harvesters. The threshing system could be set-up either on the field or on the farm, depending on when the contractor would arrive in late summer/autumn.

The grain would be collected in bags and stored on the farm, or directly transported to the mill (if it had the capacity) or to the station/harbour for shipping. However, I think in Europe grain was mainly locally milled and the flour shipped, but distances were comparatively short. Over longer distances, the grain would be shipped in bulk and milled at the destination. So, bags were used along the way from the field to the point of bulk shipping.

From the early 20th century on, even smaller farms may have had their own small threshing machine and a portable hit-n-miss or similar petrol engine to drive it. Or such equipment was shared across the village.

 

The arrival of the combine-harvester seems to have changed this pattern, as they either off-loaded into a lorry dring alongside or were periodically emptied into open lorries that then drove to mill or the shipping point.

 

 

[Cathead]

I had NO idea this mini-project would spark such interest in the esoterica of grain elevators! And it's sparked me to read up more on the subject than I ever thought I would for what's nominally a minor background structure in a much larger project. But this also shows why people get drawn into model railroading; it encompasses such a wide area of intellectual interest that there's something for almost anyone.

 

On 3/11/2025 at 10:48 PM, mtaylor said:

Brings back memories from decades ago of biking the Katy Trial (if I remember right). We'd start in St. Charles

Yep, that's the Katy Trail all right. Glad to bring back memories!

 

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

Well, good for those out in the Far West, who have the space for such scenic settings. We humble urban dwellers have to make do with dioramas or scenes in glass boxes

Yep, we hardy pioneer stock have frontier innovations like basements and spare bedrooms! Wait until I share the full track plan, this is about 20% of it.

 

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

Where did the power for the grain-elevator come from? Manual labour?

I would guess steam. We had steam-powered mills and other industries by the mid-1800s, so it's easy to imagine even a small-town elevator in 1900 having a simple power plant running a coal-fired boiler or some such. The interesting thing is I don't see direct evidence of it in the photos I have, but it must be there somewhere. Maybe hidden behind the hay barn? (more on that in a minute)

 

6 hours ago, wefalck said:

How would be the grain delivered to the silo, in sacks or loose? Threshing machines in Europe were designed to output into sacks.

 

Perhaps the ramp served both, the hay-barn and the grain-silo.

My initial impression was that grain was still handled and delivered locally in bulk, but I can't prove it. Obviously grain could be shipped in sacks, as seen in the photos of Peerless loaded down with grain sacks, but it wasn't done this way on railroads in 1900. So I can't say whether the steamboat-borne grain was sacked and farm and brought to the vessel, or brought to a central receiving point and sacked there before being loaded on the vessel. So the same would apply to this elevator; maybe local farms were sacking grain for local transport and the sacks were just getting emptied into a chute at the base of the elevator. Most resources I can find online "start" well after this era, with more modern technology, and I'm having difficulty finding details for earlier periods. As for the ramp, it's possible, but a close look at its geometry suggests that it doesn't reach the full second level until well behind the elevator (look closely at the image without a ramp roof), so it'd be an awkward delivery point to shuttle the grain (sacked or otherwise) from there back to the elevator. And why would they bother, when ground-level (or below) delivery was ubiquitous in most elevators?

 

This leads to a broader point. My impression is that the elevator was built first, then the hay barn tacked on shortly thereafter. My main argument for this is how the two parts of the structure have very different siding; they LOOK like two different buildings, rather than one unified structure. The elevator has very smooth siding, like plain boards, while the hay barn has what looks like a coarser board-and-batten pattern. That's certainly what I did on the model, to recreate the effect of the two looking different. But I can't prove their relationship. The relevance here is that if the elevator was built first, it may have had to rejigger its receiving area (which would likely be on the back side of the structure based on normal American practice), where the hay barn ended up. But no inspection of either photos has turned up anything I can clearly identify as the steam plant (e.g. a smokestack) or a clear delivery point for wagons. 

 

Basically all this is a shrug, as interesting as it is, because I can recreate the physical appearance of the trackside part of the building pretty accurately based on the two photos, and the rest is fun esoterica but doesn't affect the actual model. What matters most is that it looks right in the background and acts as a place for local freights to spot boxcar traffic.