Earlville, IL: CB&Q Depot and 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
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.

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(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

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.]