Rosaile, NE: CB&Q Depot & Water Tower and Grain Elevator

Depot: (Satellite, I'm guessing the northwest quadrant of Columbia St. and the tracks)

Elevator: (Satellite)

I was going to pass on this one until I realized that the far grain elevator is still standing. Note that grain is being loaded into a boxcar. Covered hoppers were not invented until the 1960s.

Beatrice Area Railroad Enthusiasts posted
CB&Q Depot, Rosalie, NE 1910.
Raymond Storey shared

An annex was added to this grain elevator.

Street View, Aug 2012

The elevator is old, but the scale is modern. In fact, Google Maps labels this facility as "SCALE." Are there feed lots in this area with their own feed mills so that grain farmers sell direct to feed lots? But the farmers need to use this scale before and after they unload at a feed lot.

Street View

When I looked at a railroad atlas, I noticed that this former CB&Q route was a textbook example of a town built at fixed intervals along the way. Normally, they are about 15 miles apart. In this case, I measured 13 miles. I read that the reason for that interval is that was the distance a steam locomotive could go before it needed more water. I've also noted that 7 miles is about as far as a farmer could go in one day with a horse and wagon. I'm sure that the range of a steam locomotive increased. But the range of a farmer did not increase until the 20th Century.  Today, farmers cannot only go further than 7 miles with an 18-wheeler, they can make multiple trips per day. But if they are using a tractor and gravity wagons, a farmer will still appreciate a local elevator that is close. That is why sometimes we will see a "railroad town" today that has nothing left except the grain elevator.

Satellite

The amount of grain storage at this elevator has shrunk rather than grown. That is unusual for a town in the Midwest.

Satellite

I was surprised to see that there is still has a siding. But looking closer I saw that BSNF uses it for MoW storage. This looks like some gondolas with new ties. The siding was truncated so that it no longer crosses P Avenue.

Satellite

It looks like a farmer on the west side of town has more storage than the elevator has.

Satellite

Rio, IL: Lost/CB&Q Depot

(Satellite, it was in the fork of the two routes.)

Noah Haggerty posted two photos with the comment:

Her name is Rio and she dances on the sand!

Instead, this is the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy depot at Rio, Illinois probably taken sometime around the early or mid-1970's. At this time, it has been abandoned and probably demolished not long after these photos. John & Roger Kujawa Photo, Thomas Dyrek Collection.

1

2

All three "spokes" were CB&Q.

1947/47 Woodhull Quad @ 62,500

I think it is the building with the white roof in the north point of the wye.

1940 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

Rio was just below Alpha.

1902 via Dennis DeBruler

BNSF (orange) still operates a route between Galesburg and the Quad Cities.

arcgis via Dennis DeBruler

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