Ralston Purina Question

[Ron Marquardt]

Was the Ralston Purina plant always located south of Lafayette where it is now, or was it relocated there from somewhere else?  / Ron 

[Robert Wheeler]

I don't know if it was always there or not.

There is what seemed like a drawer full of drawings in the archives of changes made to the track layout over the years. I don't have the inventory sheet but guess that it was either #20 or #19 from the list of drawers.

This is from memory. On one of the special trips to Chicago, my wife and I were permitted  to work on the drawer inventory inside the storage locker there under Ed's watchful eye.

[Ron Marquardt]

Thanks Bob.  Why I was wondering was because I've seen a picture, identified as Lafayette, with Ralston in the background, and it looks like it's taken just south of Lafayette Jct., but there is no passing track in the photo.  Makes me wonder if Ralston was originally somewhere else, or if the siding at the Junction was ever lengthened?  The picture was taken from railroad north of where the Ralston switch would have been.  / Ron

[Ken Weller]

Drawings about Ralston Purina are in drawer 020 - there are many drawings of revisions, proposed or actual, track changes, etc.  Not all of drawer 020 has been scanned; just the smaller drawings (ledger size or smaller).  No written inventory of drawer 020 either, so far.

[James W Smith]

I have a sheet maybe from drawer 20 that the Lft Jct pass track was lengthened in 1948.  And I have track diagrams that show the Crawfordsville pass track extended to Main St -- and of course today it is stumped at Market.

Purina Chows was there in 1947 <http://www.soyinfocenter.com/HSS/ralston_purina.php>
other than that I can't say

[Jim Davis]

Ron,

 It was built as part of Ralston's expantion after WWII.

JD