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

[Cathead]

9 minutes ago, popeye2sea said:

In many cases the railroads owned the land as part of land grant deals with the government to develop the right of way .  As the rail lines were built the railroad sold off parcels.

In earlier eras, yes, but by ~1900 that wasn't really happening in places like central Missouri because most/all of the land was already owned by private landowners long before the railroad came through. The Katy's expansion across central Missouri, the focus here, didn't benefit from such a program. Many Western towns were, indeed, platted by the railroads as part of their land grants, but that didn't happen in this case.

 

There's an interesting side story here related to the Katy, though. When the first portion of the line was being built in the 1800s, heading south from western Missouri and eastern Kansas and heading for Texas, the railroad WAS counting on those large government land grants to fund its construction. It was promised such grants across Indian Territory (now Oklahoma). But those grants got tied up in legal battles that went up to the Supreme Court, since that land was owned by relocated Native American tribes, who argued that the government couldn't just give their land to a railroad since they already held government-granted title to it. Long story short, the Katy never did get any of those land grants and that caused a major financial burden for the railroad that played into its longer-term struggles to succeed and stay independent.

 

Quote

In New England towns grew around typical commercial nexus; farms, rivers, ports, crossroads.

 

That tends to be true of most towns. Few North American settlements weren't/aren't centered on some form of nexus, no matter where they were. Even out on the prairies, towns tended to be either by springs, or on local high ground, or even just centered on a notable stand of trees. Most of the towns along the Katy's line along the Missouri River long pre-dated the railroad because they were river-shipping towns first. There are a few exceptions, like McBaine, but that only existed because of the junction up to Columbia.

 

Another is the town of Mokane, farther east, which grew around the Katy's first chosen location for a division point yard and locomotive servicing facility, roughly halfway to St. Louis. The town's very name is railroad derived, a shortening of Missouri (MO), Kansas (KAN), and Eastern (E), the name of the shell company created by the Katy to build that line. Once it was complete, the Katy absorbed the MK&E but the name of Mokane remained. Eventually the Katy moved their main yards and division point west to Franklin, where their main lines diverged (as depicted on my layout), but Mokane's another rare example of a true railroad town on this line.

 

 

[Rik Thistle]

Eric,

 

2 hours ago, Cathead said:

I've always gotten the impression that even small villages were quite densely constructed, especially along their high streets

 

Richard

On 1/20/2026 at 6:08 PM, Rik Thistle said:

Rural areas, eg small farms and villages, had more land to spare so spacing was a bit more generous. Houses/buildings tended to be stone built so there may have been a need to keep a sizeable construction zone between them. 

 

I think original small villages would have a bit more space to play with.  If the village quickly grew in to a town/citiy then the original buildings were likely knocked down and Gen 2 built.

 

But again very dependant on whether the village/town was built in a restrictive valley or a flatter area. Town planning, if there actually was any in the early days, would have been minimal, I guess.

 

Yes, there are quite beautiful and compact high streets in Europe which have been deliberately preserved. Which is the right thing to do, - it's good for culture and tourism 

 

I skied in Breckenridge many years ago....beautiful location and town. And I agree, the streets were wide and plenty space between the buildings.

 

 Sorry for sidetracking your very good build thread in to a town planning discussion.... onwards with McBaine 😉

 

Richard

 

[wefalck]

Town development is an interesting subject and certainly was different between the USA and Europe, given the different time-scales. Most towns and even villages in Europe go back hundreds of years or even back to Roman times, with some of the original settlement patterns from the latter period still traceable on modern maps.

 

There different factors determining plot sizes and shapes. One factor can be how taxation was fixed, in some countries it was, for instance, the width of the plot along the street, resulting in narrow deep plots (as seen e.g. in Spain). Fire regulations could be another factor - thatched and/or wooden houses where built further apart from each other. Post the plague epidemics and the 30-Years-War in the 17th century many villages had to be refounded and until then unsettled land began to be cultivated. There was an incentive, for security reasons, to keep the built-up area tight (and more easily to defend), again resulting in narrow plots with vegetable gardens/orchards extending far out. Sometimes these old patterns can be still seen today, even in now urbanised areas.

 

Not being blessed with the space for a model railway (due to dense urbanisation and consequently small apartments with little ancillary space, such as basements), my main interest is the landscaping etc. development. I guess, I have to wait a bit for that now ...

 

[Keith Black]

I hadn't thought about farms in that area but a neat accessory would be an old thresher to sit at the edge of McBaine  I love old threshers, they're just lovely old things. 

 

 Metal HO scale model kit that's available out there. 

[Rik Thistle]

Threshers are fascinating machines, especially to a young lad - I was raised on a farm.

 

Fascinating, but potentially very dangerous....lots of exposed moving parts, but since the hands understood the risks they didn't get injured.. Different times.

 

Richard

[wefalck]

… and the portable steam-engines or traction-engines that powered them.

[Cathead]

It's fascinating to me which subjects explode into huge discussions and which don't!

 

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

resulting in narrow plots with vegetable gardens/orchards extending far out. Sometimes these old patterns can be still seen today, even in now urbanised areas.

You can find similar patterns of land use and ownership in portions of the US that were influenced by early French settlement. For example, on the lower Mississippi River, both banks are lined with long narrow strips reaching back from the river, because each farm needed access to the river for shipping but could extend as far back into the floodplain as they liked. You also see this pattern in portions of southeast Missouri (from St Louis south) where again you get very narrow land boundaries that pre-date Anglo-Saxon settlement. French settlers here had completely different mental models of land use, tending to set up semi-communal villages with shared agricultural land, rather than the Anglo-Saxon model of scattered individual farmsteads that was more common elsewhere in the US. But this doesn't apply to the area this model railroad depicts, where the French influence was limited to fur trappers and traders rather than settlers.

 

3 hours ago, wefalck said:

my main interest is the landscaping etc. development. I guess, I have to wait a bit for that now

Well, the good news is that (a) I won't be stopping scenery progress in Rocheport entirely and (b) McBaine should move forward faster as it's a smaller and simpler scene. 

 

2 hours ago, Keith Black said:

a neat accessory would be an old thresher to sit at the edge of McBaine

I'm not an expert on old farm machinery. Any advice on determining designs that would be appropriate for 1900? My loose understanding is that by, say, the 1910s or so steam-powered machinery was taking over from horse-powered threshers/harvesters, but it feels like 1900 is a real transition time that could make it hard to make a correct choice of model. I'm certainly intending this layout to depict a pre-automobile era, especially in these smaller towns where they would still have been an expensive novelty. So it would feel anachronistic to have a steam thresher sitting there. In the model you show, I can't quite see a detail that tells me definitively one or the other, what the power source would be or what the correct era would be?

[Rik Thistle]

Eric,

 

Threshing Time | Farmington Historical Society - https://farmingtonhistorical.org/stories-threshing.html   and  Machinery’s profound impact on farming never seems to slow - https://historyonthefox.wordpress.com/tag/reaper/

 

Some pics and info from around 1900. Note: adding a Thresher would tie down the season your layout depicts ie when the crops come in.

 

Richard

 

Edit: Adding a thresher etc would fit in nicely with the grain barns mentioned in earlier posts. This could be a whole project in itself, assuming there were crops grown nearby...maybe it's a side-project for now or for later when the railway layout is up and running. Either way another interesting subject for us readers 😉 

 

Edited 15 hours ago by Rik Thistle

[Cathead]

1 minute ago, Rik Thistle said:

Note: adding a Thresher would tie down the season your layout depicts ie when the crops come in.

Not necessarily. It could be stored under a barn's overhang, or possibly being depicted on a road being moved somewhere. The layout is set in late fall or early winter, so past harvest time for most crops, so it definitely wouldn't in a field. But that doesn't preclude it being present.

[wefalck]

Considering the envisaged season, perhaps a steam-plow set might then be more approriate. I am not quite sure about the developments in the USA, but over here in Europe in many areas, at least those with larger fields, contract steam-plowing was quite common with the two-engine plus balance-plow set travelling all over the regions.

I believe in the USA and Canada, IC-engine powered tractors with plows attached came into use even before WW1, while these took off in Europe only from the 1920s or so on.

 

[Cathead]

4 hours ago, wefalck said:

IC-engine powered tractors with plows attached came into use even before WW1,

My impression, though I'm not an expert, is that 1900 is just a bit too early for the widespread adoption of steam-powered farm machinery. Especially on smaller farms in relatively remote areas like this layout depicts. Even by 1910 it'd be more acceptable. Part of my problem in researching things like this, is that most sources don't really care about the exact year and will just say things like (making this up) "in the early 1900s, steam-powered machinery became more widespread and was widely adopted by WW1", which is fine if you're interested in the general history but not very helpful if you're specifically trying to nail down the situation in a certain narrow time frame within that rapid transition.

 

I've been using "1900" as a shorthand for my layout's setting, but really it's kind of an amalgamation of roughly 1893-1903, essentially the first decade from when the line was first built to just before the massive flood of 1903 did all sorts of damage. And that framing especially nudges the technological level more toward the horse-dominated 1800s than the IC-dominated 1900s. And aesthetically, that's what I want to present: the last era of a horse-dominated culture before autos/IC started taking over. I just find that more interesting, personally.

[Rik Thistle]

Post deleted.

Edited 1 hour ago by Rik Thistle

[Rik Thistle]

15 minutes ago, Cathead said:

the last era of a horse-dominated culture

 

Yes, that sounds good.

 

Clydesdale horses pulling ploughs etc were still used in Scotland well in to the 1930s.  Very powerful and gentle animals.

 

Richard

 

 

[Keith Black]

 

 "No stem Mr Holman"

 

 

 Horse drawn threshers appeared before steam powered tractors took over. 

[Cathead]

First one looks horse-drawn, second one looks mule-drawn. Especially appropriate for Missouri. My point is ensuring that if I were to include a thresher model, that it correctly be a non-steam version.

[Ian_Grant]

Wow that's a lot of horses/mules hitched together!  Very interesting history picture.......

[realworkingsailor]

I’d also suggest researching what kind of agriculture was practiced in the area. Threshers are great if you’re in the middle of vast fields of wheat, but are pretty useless in a dairy operation! From the looks of the grain elevator in Rocheport, it doesn’t look like grain was a significant crop in the area, and going by the few photos you’ve shared of McBaine, if grain was significant, an elevator would have been one of the first structures built.

 

Andy