Vermilion C: Fairmount, IL: Fairmount Coal Mine

(Satellite)

Andy Zukowski posted
The Coal Mine Office And Coal Crusher In Fairmount, Illinois. C1910

Dennis DeBruler commented on Andy's post
https://maps.app.goo.gl/TZGFywWHpzadQxtPA

Directory

Note the C&EI hoppers in Andy's photo above.

1931/31 Fithian Quad @ 48,000

Dover, NJ: NJ Transit/DL&W Depot, Freight House and Interlocking Tower

Depot: (Satellite)

Freight: (Satellite)

Tower: (Satellite?)

Depot:

Street View, Nov 2020

Freight House:

Street View, Jul 2023

Darren Reynolds posted five images with the comment:

Conrails (Erie Lackawanna)

"Dover" tower 

Dover, New Jersey

Tim Shanahan shared

1

"Dover" tower in Dover,New Jersey with the Armstrong leaver Pipeline going under the road!!

Photo by: Jim Mardiguian

2

nside of "Dover" tower.. Does?

Anyone know what the yellow leaver is for?

Photo & Date: Unknown

3

"Dover" tower in Dover,New Jersey

Photo by: Dan Killinger

Richard Ruggiero: Plenty of my fellow operators grew up at that interlocking.

4
A Conrail track and interlocking diagram for "Dover" tower

5

"Dover" tower in Dover, New Jersey... that house is close to the tower. I bet they could hear the operator at night

Talking the dispatcher..

Photo & Date: Unknown

I spent more time than I care to admit looking on a satellite map for the location of this tower. I could not find an embankment, road and residential area next to the tracks. And the track diagram is not consistent with the tracks in this topo map. DL&W was the southern route with the railyards. A silver lining is that I found the depot and freight house while looking for the tower.

1954/54 Dover Quad @ 24,000

LeGrand, IA: Gas Station with Glass Cylinder Pumps

(Satellite, somewhere along Main Street, which was on the Lincoln Highway back then.)

Note sign shows just 17 cents and they haven't invented the ".9" game yet. But my main reason for noting this photo is the illustration of how important the "good roads" movement was back in the 1920s. This early station existed because it was on the Lincoln Highway. But, even though it was on the Lincoln Highway, it had yet to be paved. So you can be sure that none of the other roads in the area were paved. The Lincoln Highway was dedicated on Oct 31, 1913, as the first coast-to-coast paved highway. [Dennis DeBruler]

Charles Martel posted
Gas Station, Grocery, Post Office, Legrand, Iowa.

Nancy Johnson Sturgill: Spare tire on rear of ca

Bill Rohr posted

1980/80 Gilman Quad @ 24,000

Columbus, NE: ADM Corn Processing Plant with Power Plant

(Satellite)

Craig Hensley Photography posted

A single UP ET44AH #2628 shoves a loaded coal train to be unloaded for the power plant at the ADM facility in Columbus, NE. 

Columbus, NE - September 2025

Ned Shaneberger: Gotta supply a lot of heat to make all that corn starch!

[I suspect that they need that heat in the form of steam. But I didn't realize that they needed so much stam that they consume unit trains of coal. ]

Given all of those tank cars, one of the outputs must be corn syrup.

Street View, May 2024

Obviously, the hopper trailer above carries corn. I wonder what these other two trailers carry.

Street View, May 2024

Todd Koch, Oct 2016

It is a green-field plant built between two railroads: UP+BNSF/CB&Q.

1958/59 Columbus Quad @ 24,000

Of course, the plant would have a loop of track to unload unit grain trains, so unloading unit coal trains would be no big deal. This is the first modern plant that I remember that is big enough to have two industrial spurs from both railroads. Note that the BNSF route (the one on the south side) now terminates at this plant.

Satellite

When I researched the David City depot just a few days ago, I wondered what plant in Columbus would cause BNSF to retain the CB&Q branch to Columbus. Now I know.

1902 via Dennis DeBruler

 I checked, and the ADM plants in Clinton and Decatur also have the grainPlant plus powerPlant labels. And I added the powerPlant label to the Ingredion plant near Chicago because I saw a tall building with three smokestacks.

Franklin C: Sesser, IL: Old Ben #21 and #26 Coal Mines

#21: (Satellite)

#26: (Satellite, we can still see where the loop of track was for loadout.)

This is #26:

Larry Joe Jenkil posted
Is this Old Ben 26?

Todd Stevens: Yup. The old plant.

Directory

Directory

Both mines were served by the CB&Q. The route north of #21 was a branch of the C&EI.

1975/77 Sesser and Rend Lake Dam Quads @ 24,000

#21

Apr 17, 1972 @ 24,000; AR1SWFO00010084

#26:

Apr 17, 1972 @ 24,000; AR1SWFO00010060

The two mines are under much of Rend Lake.

Map

Are they now mining the tailings for rare earths? Or are they just decontaminating the land?

Satellite

Street View, Aug 2024

Gothenburg, NE: Several old grain elevators

(Satellite, the town started north of the tracks and at the beginning of the alphabet in terms of the streets)

This town was on the Lincoln Highway.

Beatrice Area Railroad Enthusiasts posted
Gothenburg, NE 1910

I include Lake Hellen to help orient then and now maps because the roads have changed a lot. Note that the Lincoln Highway has yet to be built.

1902 Gothenburg Quad @ 125,000

Elevator row has been replaced by a big elevator. Note that this one is served by a Class I railroad, UP because it has a fall protector (skinny blue truss) and its own locomotive.

Street View, Apr 2012

It can handle unit trains because it has multiple sidings and its own locomotive. It looks like they are cleaning up a spill.

Satellite

And this siding also serves a fertilizer distributor with liquid and dry fertilizer.

Satellite

And that industrial spur continues north into a big feed mill. I wonder what they receive by rail. The grain bins along the north seem to be part of NSG Logistics.

Satellite

Or maybe they ship dried alfalfa.

feed-products
Alfalfa Dehydrator in Gothenburg

In addition to a truck scale in the fertilizer distributor, there is a scale and some bins on the east side.

Satellite

The towns along the original overland railroad were a lot closer than every 15 miles. Is that because they established work camps along the way?

Road Map

Perrinton, MI: Lost/GTW Depot and Drovers Caboose

(Satellite, based on the topo map below.)

Durand Union Station-Michigan Railroad History Museum posted two photos with the comment:

Today’s featured depot is the Grand Trunk Depot in Perrinton 🚂

Perrinton, located in Gratiot County, was settled around 1886 and quickly grew into a village by 1891.

The town sat about ten miles west of Ashley on the Grand Trunk Western’s Ashley-to-Muskegon line.

Perrinton was home to at least two different Grand Trunk depots over the years. The first photo shows an earlier version of the station. Unfortunately, neither depot appears to remain standing today.

________________________

Sources:

"Station: Perrinton, MI".  Michigan Railroads. http://www.michiganrailroads.com/.../845-perrington-mi. Accessed 09 October 2025.

📸 Image 1 is from http://www.michiganrailroads.com/.../845-perrington-mi

📸 Image 2 is from Durand Union Station's Margaret Zdunic Archives.

Craig Harris: The bottom photo is what it looked like at the end except it was painted in the brown and buff colors. The last time I was there many years ago it was not there. It either had been moved or torn down. I believe the two photos show the same building, the upper one showing the building remodeled into the lower view.

1

2

MichiganRailroads

I could not find a grain elevator in the area. But I did find covered hopper cars in storage on a siding in town.

Satellite

1965/66 Perrinton Quad @ 24,000

My motivation for noting this town is the drovers caboose in the top photo above.

The drovers’ caboose was a unique part of American railroading tied to the shipment of livestock such as cattle and sheep. In 1906 Congress passed a law that required the feeding and watering of livestock on trains every 28 hours. Since most such shipment took longer than that, the railroads had to carry drovers, men who handled the livestock, along with those trains to comply with the law.

The drovers’ caboose was much longer than a typical caboose, because it served not only the train crew, but also the drovers assigned to watch after the livestock in shipment from the ranch to the processing plants. These cabooses had two separate sections. The rear section was the standard railroad crew portion with cooking and sleeping accommodations as well as the cupola or bay window. The front section was reserved for the livestock drovers.

These cabooses appeared usually in stock trains where the entire train was made up of livestock cars. They were also used on occasion when large shipments of livestock were mixed in with other freight. The drovers’ cabooses were always kept on the rear of the train since the cars’ primary purpose was still to serve as quarters for the conductor and brakemen and only secondarily as quarters for the drovers. – Martin E. Hansen

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