Towns and Nature: July 2025

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

Woolstock, IA: Grain Elevator and Lost/C&NW Depot

The evolution of using buildings instead of bins to store grain continues as the buildings get larger.

New Cooperative posted 0:18 video
Significant progress continues at our Woolstock grain project. The concrete walls are now complete, and substantial headway has been made on the grain receiving tower. Currently, crews are installing the roof trusses that will support the fabric roof structure. The project remains on track for completion ahead of the upcoming harvest season.

Dave Yager: Rail service for this? [Unfortunately, there was no answer. The railroad is UP/C&NW.]

[Several comments asked about the capacity, but I didn't see any answers.
I noticed that they are using two worker lifts as cranes to walk the trusses into position.]

Street View, Jun 2024

They already have some big buildings on the other side of the tracks. So, this is another example of a conveyor over a Class I railroad.

Street View, Jun 2024

While trying to confirm that the tracks are still owned by UP, I came across:

Joe Hawkins posted
Not Clarion, but close by. Passenger rail service at Woolstock train station in 1955. From the U of Iowa digital archive

The 2004 SPV Map labels the route as UP/C&NW. (It also spells the town as Woodstock.) Here is another source that indicates UP still owns it.

iowa

Minerva, OH: Reused/NYC Roundhouse and Ohio Central Yard

Roundhouse: (Satellite)

Railyard: (Satellite)

Doug Nelson posted

40°43'02"N 81°05'58"W

Minerva, Ohio (southeast of Canton)

Pretty sure this used to be a roundhouse on the NYC

Michael McKenzie commented on Doug's post
1958

The roundhouse is accurately marked on this map.

1960/61 Minerva Quad @ 24,000

Google Maps indicates that the railyard is now owned by Ohio Central.

Satellite

Layton, PA: B&O (NS) Tower

(Satellite, someplace on the north side of the river where the tracks are close to the river.)

Darren Reynolds posted three photos with the comment: "B&Os 'NS' tower... Layton, Pennsylvania."

" NS" tower was only part time as needed for track work.

It had a mechanical interlocking machine June 1979

Photo by: Rob Mandeville

And yet there were no traces of the signaling pipelines less than a year later.

A Westbound with WM Eng -4260 passing "NS" tower

March 1980

Photo by: Mark Hinsdale

"NS" tower was a Standard design for the B&O 1978

Photo by: Ivan Abrams

All images from North American interlockings States A to Z and Canada...

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

Dover, OH: Ohio & Erie Canal , Steel Mills and Warther Museum

The dashed line marks the right-of-way of the abandoned Ohio & Erie Canal.

1944/44 Dover Quad @ 62,500

This tree line is on the canal's RoW.

Satellite

Michael Maitland posted six photos with the comment: "While exploring old railroads in southern Ohio, went to check on three once large steel centers."

2
5 large steel operations, 2 northside, and 3 southside of the river.

3
Northside east, one building left repurposed.

4
Northside west. Plant is in and appeared to be operating.

5
southside, once a large blast furnace operation.

6
southside, more of the footprint with a few mill buildings standing and operating.

This model of a mill is one of the many wood carvings in the museum.

Ernest Warther Museum & Gardens posted 0:52 video
Like many other small towns across America at the turn of the 20th Century, Dover was a steel town and Mooney has re-created the mill he remembers of the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company. Mooney carved himself and his best friend (and brother-in-law) John Richard at the shears' table. As you can see, Mooney has carved his co-workers and friends, all doing their jobs (and even eating their lunch). He mechanized the mill, using what was available. We still use leather sewing maching belts on the pulleys. For Mooney, the mill was his first real job and he stayed at the mill, working long hard hours for close to 24 years. This job not only allowed him to provide for his family, but it also provided memories that would last a lifetime and laid the groundwork to allow him to carve throughout his life.

The same video as above

nj nuzum, Mar 2024

TheWartherMuseum

Angela T, Mar 2024

Gladstone, IL: Lost/CB&Q Depot and Grain Elevators

Depot: (Satellite, a guess based on the aerial photo below.)

East Elevator: (Satellite)

West Elevator: (Satellite)

Andy Zukowski posted
CB&Q Railroad Depot in Gladstone, Illinois

Randy Chambers: A former employee of the CB&Q that lived here in Monmouth until his passing told me 20 years ago that the house on East Euclid Avenue in Monmouth north side of the road brick ranch style house in the 300 block is made out of the 2x6 boards from that Depot.

Larry Candilas: MP 196.9 Ottumwa Sub; also south end of Galva & Gladstone branch.

Thomas Whitt shared

Richard Fiedler shared

The east/west route through town is the BNSF mainline between Chicago and Denver. The branch to the North on the west side of town was abandoned by CB&Q. [2005 SPV Map]

1902

I included in the lower-left corner the junction with the branch in case CB&Q built the depot over there to serve trains on the branch as well as the mainline. It looks like they didn't. The best candidate for the depot is the rectangle west of Main Street and south of the tracks. It is strange that the major road along the south side of the tracks is now gone. Big roads normally appear, rather than disappear, as time goes on.

1941 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

The eastern grain elevator is rather normal except it doesn't have any concrete silos.

Satellite

The western grain elevator is very unusual. It looks like it has mostly long buildings for storage. Lots of them.

Satellite

It is rail served even though it is along a mainline for BNSF because you can see cuts of hopper cars on a siding in a satellite image. It looks like they use trucks to haul the grain from the buildings to the hoppers.

Street View, Sep 2023

Trucks may also provide rail service to their eastern elevator by using the truck-to-rail transloading facility.

Street View, Aug 2013

The western elevator was about half built in 1985.

Google Earth, Dec 1985

It was completed by 1998. This facility is labeled Consolidated Grain and Barge Co. on Google Maps. I'm surprised that CGB would build a rail-served facility here rather than along the nearby Mississippi River. CGB does a lot of grain movement using barges.