Earlville, IL: CB&Q Depot and Wood Grain Elevator

Depot: (Satellite)

Grain Elevator: (Satellite)

Bill Molony posted
The Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad's depot at Earlville, Illinois - about 1914.

Andy Zukowski posted
C. B. & Q. Railroad Depot in Earlville, Illinois 1915

Steven Holding: This is the later depot the old original Wood depot was moved across the tracks and used as a freight house.

Richard Fiedler shared

Thomas Whitt shared

Bonnie Hallerberg: Went to first grade in Earlville while Dad worked there for CB&Q and we lived in the cook car. My mom was the cook for the guys. Would have been 1952. My teacher was Mamie Larson. Super memories!

 

Jimmy Fiedler posted
Chicago Burlington & Quincy Earlville IL depot
Richard Fiedler shared

A different exposure.

Andy Zukowski posted
C.B.&Q Train Depot in Earlville, Illinois. Dated 1912.  Published by C R Childs

Steven Holding: Moved to other side of tracks and used as Freight House when present depot built.

Richard Fiedler shared

Andy Zukowski posted
CB&Q Railroad Depot in Earlville, Illinois. 1974
Ray Speerly: There used to be a spur line that ran from there to Paw Paw then on to Sterling Rock Falls. Long gone now.
Thomas Whitt shared

I was going to pass on yet-another-small-town depot until I saw Marty Bernard's comment that this is a "Standard CB&Q station." Other comments indicate it is now used for offices. Even now, you can tell that freight was handled on the west side because of the big door and relative lack of windows.

Street View, Oct 2022
Obviously, BNSF now uses a former yard for storage. I recognize those precast items as what they use around tracks in a crossing.

Here we can see how the full width units are used in a track and the half-width units are used on the outsides of a track.

20180405 0294
(They are preparing the Hy-Rail for road travel.)

When I used a topo map to confirm that there used to be more tracks across from the depot, I discovered that there were some extra tracks west of town as well.

1971 Earlville Quad @ 24,000

In fact, a couple of those tracks still exist. It looks like BNSF now uses them for storage of MoW equipment.

Satellite

 
It is interesting that the depot has a bay window on the side away from the tracks. Is that so that they can use a standardized design on either side of the tracks?

Street View

Steven J. Brown posted
Amtrak Illinois Zephyr #347 is on the BNSF at Earlville, Illinois - May 20, 2000.
Ken Schmidt: The shot made better with the elevator/feed mill on the background.
Steven J. Brown shared
Steven J. Brown shared

Sam Carlson posted
June 1974. Westbound at Earlville.

The wood elevator peaking out over the back silo in Sam's photo is still standing.

Street View, Oct 2022

I see at least three farmers that are using gravity wagons. 

Street View

Wesley Peters posted four photos with the comment:

Earlville, La Salle County, IL
Earlville Grange Elevator Co. Built in 1905. 30,000-bushel capacity.
So far this is the only intact Grange built elevator that I have seen during my travels photographing grain elevators.
Photographed on 6/9/2024.
Photos courtesy of Wesley Peters.

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Jerry Krug commented on Wesley's post
My photo on February 9, 2017:

It looks like the trucks and wagons are lined up for the elevator along the UP/C&NW instead of the BNSF/CB&Q elevator that we can see in the street view. This is another example of an elevator being next to an active railroad that might as well be next to an abandoned railroad because both of these are Class I and won't serve them. The UP route is just a branch that serves a sand mine in Troy Grove, IL, so it is not like the grain elevator traffic would tie up a busy route. 

Satellite

Update:

Bruce Simak posted
Earlville Illinois. I’m modeling this for my HO scale railroad layout. I shot this on a beautiful late October day a couple of years ago.
[Some comments suggest suppliers of HO models of the bins and dryer.]

Marty Bernard posted five photos with the comment:

Around Earlville, Ill. in January 1979

Roger Puta stopped at Earlville in January 1979 and took some non-train photos. I'm posting them in the sequence he took them. All are pretty obvious except the last one.

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Gary Sprandel: Geeze the old 6" lamps, A frame gates with the dangling arm lamps. That brings back memories

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Ray Schloss: Looks like BN had some extra green paint they were trying to use up !

Ben Thompson: they did that to a lot of their stations

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Ben Thompson: hah! A green Chevy Luv aka Isuzu

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This must be the approach signal for the C&NW branch line that crossed the BN(Q) at Earlville. I don't understand what the aspect means.

Jack Fuller: I suspect that this is a Distant signal, that can only display "Approach". There doesn't appear to be any mechanism to move the blade. It isn't a Block signal - says nothing about the occupancy of the track between it and the home signal at Earlville. The Troy Grove Sub was dark territory - no Block signals.

Sam Carlson: It's what the C&NW referred to as a "Fixed 45." It was the distant approach, in this case to the Q (BN) at Earlville. There was no mechanism, since it was "fixed." Used in dark territory. At most of those types of junctions or crossings the C&NW train would ease up to the crossing and stop short; then a crew member would go to a call box to call the dispatcher for permission to cross. Quite often there was no actual interlocking. Everything would be done manually.