Wordless Wednesday #244

 

Wordless Wednesday #243

Jim McFarlane Collection

 

"Blocking" in Atlas Plywood

Atlas Plywood in Richford is in the background. P. R. Hastings

 I've spent some time this morning gathering the information I have on the Atlas Plywood plant that once served as a backdrop to the CV's Richford yard. It didn't take long to gather the information since I don't really have all that much on it. 

I do have the Sanborn Map that shows the footprint of the building, and a few photos. I've blogged about the plant previously - mostly in the post you can find HERE. That post covers the prototype - my goal this morning was to think through how to convert the information I have into a (compressed) model of the facility. 

The brochure and Sanborn Map both date to the 1920s and early 30s. The only images I've found of the building after the war (it burned down in October 1954) were a partial view captured by Phil Hastings, and a quick snippet of the building on a DVD that was remastered from 8mm movie film shot from a moving caboose! 

Atlas Plywood - screen capture from a Central Vermont Railway in Steam DVD. 

It seemed pretty obvious that I wasn't going to find any more detailed images than I already had. Besides, a quick scaling of the map image of the facility (called Richford Mfg. on the 1920 Sanborn) revealed it was about 550 feet from stem to stern.

I'd left a large area for the model of the plywood plant - but building it full scale would completely dominant the view of the layout from anywhere in the room. 

A compressed version of the plant seemed a better approach. 

In the end I settled on a footprint about 36" long by 8" long at the widest point for the buildings themselves. That doesn't include some areas available for lumber stacks and the like. 

I drew up a footprint that seemed to capture the key elements of the building. Some of the items I wanted to include were:

1.  The two story section between the tracks in the map image

2. The walkway between it and the larger building. 

3. The portion of the three story section with the three smokestacks. 

4. The large two story area at the top of the image in the Sanborn Map. 

Rather than try to draw a scale plan of the building I blocked these key elements. 

The first draft of how this could look is shown below. I started by drawing the overhead "footprint" view. Then I carried the lines where the building went from two to three stories and the like and blocked into the basic shapes. It looks like this will fit well and produce a convincing impression of the complex. 

Before committing this to styrene I need to mockup the building in three dimensions. 

"Blocked in" sketch of how the key elements could be combined into a convincing compressed model of the prototype. 

 

Wordless Wednesday #239

 

Wordless Wednesday #215

Richford??? I'm pretty sure this one is mislabeled!!

Wordless Wednesday #207

Traffic in (and out) of a plywood plant

Most of the industries along the Central Vermont, at least in Vermont, can be summed up in one word - lumber. 
Furniture makers, door and window manufacturers, and even ski and baseball bat manufacturers all had one thing in common - their raw material was primarily hardwoods harvested from the verdent Green Mountains. One could even say another famed Vermont product - maple syrup - was directly related to the lumber industry.  
So it was no surprise to me when I learned one of the larger industries (click on photo above to enlarge) along the CV yard in Richford was a plywood manufacturing facility. Specifically, this  particular plant specialized in making plywood shipping crates for shipping a variety of items, including "special talking machines." 

So the outbound shipments are fairly obvious. Plywood crates, shipped flat in "shooks" (kind of like the Ikea of its day, I guess!) that can go almost anywhere other products are made. 

But I'm wondering what, if anything, would be shipped in to the plant?
To make plywood you start with a log, strip the bark, and slice it into thin strips, called "plys."Glue is applied to the plys and they are stacked with the grain running alternate directions from one layer to the next and then they are subject to high temperature steam before the stacked plys are placed into a hydraulic press (below) that laminates the layers together forming, you guessed it, "plywood." 

The raw sheets are then heated and stacked to dry, and will eventually be cut to size and/or sanded before being shipped to the customer (the illustrations with this post came from a 1921 Atlas Co. brochure - you can find the entire brochure HERE). 
I'm fairly certain the plant in Richford generated enough wood scrap that the boilers - visible at the location of the stacks in the photo above - were likely wood fired, but who knows - it's possible they were coal fired or the coal provided supplemental power to the plant. 
"Adhesive" of some sort may also have been delivered to the plant - at least that seems fairly logical. I don't believe the plant received wood by rail, although it may have in earlier times or in the event a unique species of wood was needed. 
Turning up the brochure has given me enough knowledge to press forward with planning how to model the industry on the layout. 

Wordless Wednesday #189

Richford Industries

Here are the industries in Richford that had their own dedicated siding tracks, or portions of a shared track, as of December, 1945

1. Atlas Plywood Co. (formerly Richford Mfg. Co.) 
- Box Material Manufacturer - Manufacturer of plywood shipping crates
- 1,000 feet of track

2. Hilton F. Marcy 
- Retail Grain and Building Supply Dealer (80 feet of the team track)

3. J. E. Martel Hay Dealer (50 feet of the team track)

4. Powell & Comings Co. 
- Hardware and Fuel Dealer (80 feet of siding)

Not on the Central Vermont, but on the Canadian Pacific in Richford (and accounting for a fair amount of CV traffic) was the Quaker Oats Co. Feed Mill - here's an aerial view of the plant from the era modeled:

The 1959 List of Industries shows more detail - I'm not sure if there were actually more online customers, or if the compiler of the 1959 list was more diligent - I suspect it's the latter. 

1. A. Deschenes 
- Retail Feed, Fertilizer and Hay Dealer

2. H. P. Hood & Sons 
- Creamery

3. Hilton F. Marcy 
- Retail Grain and Building Supplies Dealer

4. Powell and Comings Co. 
- Hardware and Fuel Dealer

5. Richford Grain Co. 
- Retail Grain Dealer

6. Sweat Comings Co. 
- Furniture Manufacturer

7. H. K. Webster Co. (formerly "Quaker Oats" 
- On Canadian Pacific
- Wholesale Grain Miller and Dealer

I also know that Atlas Plywood burned down in late 1954. 

Station Stop - Richford, Vermont

The newest station stop map I've developed shows the end point of the Central Vermont's Richford Branch. The overall map shows the route the CV line took into town, including it's connection with the Canadian Pacific Ry. 
The close up map shows the trackage in the station area proper. (Click on the map to enlarge it).