Cotton Ginning and Compressing - Model Railroader Magazine

Late4Dinner

Here, the Compress is across the tracks from the gin. How did the cotton get from the gin to the compress?

I assume you are talking about the Mississippi Cotton Oil Company and  the Grenada Compress Co. 

Two different companies, processes and products.  They aren't connected, except they are in the cotton products business.

The cotton is ginned (not at either of those buildings) and the cotton fibers are separated and sent to the compress.  The huls and seeds are removed from the fibers and sent to the oil company.  The oil company separates the hulls from the cotton seed.  The seed is pressed, providing oil and meal.  Cotton seed oil is used in cooking.  Cotton seed meal is a high quality animal feed.  The cotton husks are an animal food additive and used as mulch.  

When I was Trainmaster in N Little Rock, AR, a cotton seed oil mill was on my territory in Pine Bluff.  Seeds and husks were delivered by truck from the cotton gins.  Oil was shipped out in tank cars.  Cotton seed meal and husks were shipped in bulk in boxcars.  It packed too much for covered hoppers, it wasn't free flowing.

The track at the oil mill should be incredibly nasty.  Cotton seed meal turns black,  gooey, and stinks to high heaven when it rots because it is high in protein.  The crews wore boots when they switched the plant.  Where a lot of it spilled by the loading area, you never really saw the ground except in the winter, because the rest of the year that area was covered in a layer of flies and gnats.

At the compress the baled cotton fibers come in, then they compressed for shipment to the mills.  While a compressed bale might look white and "fluffy", its actually hard, you could drive a nail into it.