Sanborn Maps - Richford Feed Mill and CV Yard

Most of the last month has been taken up with travel to visit family and friends, but I have gotten started on roadbed and track. One reference I'm using to lay out not only the track, but the various scenic elements such as roads, waterways, buildings, and the like are Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps. 

The Library of Congress has been making considerable progress posting scans of the full color original maps and posting them on the LOC website (www.loc.gov). 

Here are the maps showing the Richford, Vt. feedmill (top) and the Central Vermont Railway yard. (Click the links or images below to go to the map on the LOC web site).  

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3754rm.g089411920/?sp=1

https://www.loc.gov/resource/g3754rm.g089411920/?sp=4&r=-0.618,-0.119,2.237,1.318,0

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. 

CV List of Industries and Facilities Located at Stations

Ten or 15 years ago Jim McFarlane and I were going back and forth by email - I was asking Jim if the railroad maintained a central list of customers. My purpose was to determine what industries were in specific towns along the line. Jim was thinking I wanted a list of all the customers who shipped via the railroad - which would have numbered in the thousands (he was thinking of each less than carload or LCL shipment as a "customer"). No matter, there was no "master list of customers." 
A few weeks later an envelope appeared in my mailbox with three documents and a short note from Jim reading "Marty, is this something that answers your question?" 
What Jim had sent me was three copies of a document called "List of Industries (Served by Private Sidings) and Facilities Located at Stations on the Central Vermont Railway and Montpelier and Barre Railroad." Quite a mouthful! (the exact title apparently changed over the years!)

One was from 1945, one from 1959, and the third from 1965. 

A page from the 1945 book is shown below: 

The 1959 book is a little different. Each page contains a list of individual railroad customers who were responsible for maintaining a siding or some portion thereof. Included was the name of the customer, a brief description of the type of business ("Feed mill", "Manufacturer of xxx" etc ...), and the length of track (right column in view below) that customer was responsible for maintaining. 

Keep in mind when the list reads "Siding length 50-feet" that does not mean there's a dedicated 50-foot long spur off the main - it merely means that particular customer was responsible for paying for the upkeep of that length of track - quite often there would be several customers located along a single siding, with each customer responsible for the maintenance of a certain portion. 
The listing also indicates the customer's name - I believe it's whomever the railroad would bill for the service. In the Enosburg Falls listing above, "Issac Brown" is shown as a Retail Petroleum Dealer with a siding length of 40 feet. 
Look on a map of Enosburg Falls and you'll note there's an oil dealer - Standard Oil Co. of New York - located on the double ended siding across from the depot. The engineering department plats make no reference to "Issac Brown." I'm fairly certain he was the owner, or at least the manager, of the Socony dealership in Enosburg Falls, Vt.