El Reno, OK: Rock Island Backshop and Roundhouse

Larry Overby posted

I asked if this was Silvis, IL and learned it was El Reno, OK. One comment indicated it was razed last month. So I decided I better look at a satellite image while it would still be there. It turns out both railroad routes through El Reno were Rock Island. So I had to search all of the track in town before I finally found it.

Satellite, a July 2015 image

Some photos from its better days.

Doug Hefty posted
El Reno - June, 1973. PHOTO CREDIT: DENNIS SCHMIDT.

Don Gerdts posted

Camera Totin Idiot    No. 16, CRI&P 110

Larry Overby posted

Brian J Hadley posted before and after shots of the interior. His comment: "Here's another before and after of the El Reno shop. Slightly different angle but notice the pit in the foreground."

Which gives me a transition to the shots during the 35 years it stood abandoned.

Doug Hefty shared Dwight Miller's photo.
Abandoned diesel shops in El Reno, OK...CRI&P Railroad...John Mallory The shop complex has not seen use since the RI Trustee concluded his work at the site around 1985

Larry Cooper posted
Larry Cooper They tried to rebuild a few years ago. They were going to run a dinner train and commuters out of the shop and build a museum inside. But the EPA intervened and shut it down. Seems its polluted. Ground is saturated with diesel fuel and the estimates to clean it up was in the millions. Interested parties withdrew.Larry Cooper Jim, a lot of people assume the floors in the shop area are cement. They are not. They are wood covered in years of grease and oil. We dropped a 500 lb. floor jack one day and wooden wedges popped up from the floor. We just pounded them back in place.John Mallory Larry Cooper Good observation. I've noticed toward the west end of the diesel shop an exposed cluster of square-shaped wood pilings. Sounds like the years of spilled grease and oil helped solidify the floor's surface. It does resemble concrete.
[I learned from the comments that  the little building on the right was the paint booth.]

It was torn down in 2016. The railroad route was owned by the state and then UP. But the shop complex was owned by someone else. I agree with a comment that if UP bought the shops as well as the railroad route, they would have quickly leveled it. They want to avoid the scenario I read in a comment about a boy falling through the roof and then rolling into an engine repair pit with water that had oil in (on) it.

Cole D. Glenn posted a 6 photos.

Evan Stair shared

Quentin Clements posted
Yep it's all coming down here in El Reno! They are salvaging the bricks. And I think I got my foot in the door for all the iron.

William A. Shaffer posted

Rock Island Shops

El Reno, OK

(Photo by Kenneth W. Moore - Collection of William .A. Shaffer)

Roundhouse

Fans of Rock Island Lines posted
Apparently I had this one of El Reno RH. I've spent 3 hrs looking for a aerial pic of whole yard. It rivals the Silvis RH pic i use as my background on page.

John Mallory: This appears on pages 40-41 of the Spring 2007 issue of CLASSIC TRAINS.

Satellite

Malinta, OH: DT&I Signal Maintainer Shed and Malinta Junction Tower: DT&I vs. NKP

(Satellite)

The shed is a reminder that in addition to depots, freight houses, and junction towers, the railroads used to maintain a lot of smaller structures such as the multiple signaling shacks that used to be at Brighton Park.

Jeff Sharp posted the following two photos with the comment:

Malinta Ohio signal maintainer Max Burns shed today restored with the depot and 1952 DT&I caboose . Moved just West of original locations along the old right of way.

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Note the rails that go from the shed to the mainline and the boards in the mainline so that the speeder could be rolled to the mainline and then turned 90-degrees.

Darren Reynolds posted seven images with the comment: "Nickel Plate Railroads    'Malinta' tower    Maintain, Ohio"

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"Malinta" tower was opened 1918 and closed 1976

The Dimond is where the DT&I Crossed..

Photo by: Wally Mattes June 1974

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The interlocking machine and model board at "Malinta "

tower..

Photo by: Wally Mattes June 13,1974

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Train order lavers at "Malinta " tower

Photo by: Wally Mattes June 13,1974

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"Malinta" tower

Photo by: David L. White (No Date)

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A Penn Central caboose passing the station and tower

March 1975

Photo by: Doug Leffler

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The station and tower at Malinta, Ohio 1967

Photo by: Bob McCord

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A map of Malinta, Ohio

Drawing by: W.J. Mattes 2021

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

Cheneyville, IL: Junction Tower: NKP/LE&W vs. Milwaukee, NKP Depot and Old Grain Elevator

Tower: (Satellite)

Depot: (Satellite)

Elevator: (Satellite)

The "spoke" to the west is abandoned, and the other three are now owned by KBS.

 

Eric Berg posted

Eric's comment:

CMStP&P's Cheneyville Tower (Pronounced Chain-ee-ville) in the summer of 1969. This view looks N/N/W with the Milwaukee tracks at left. Cheneyville was where the Milwaukee Road crossed the NKP's LE&W line. The interlocking was manned by Milwaukee men and the call sign was "CY". Like Humrick, West Dana and Webster, Cheneyville was reduced from a 2-story tower to a 1-story cabin. This location was approximately 3/4 mile west of the town of Cheneyville. Wyes were located in both the S/E and S/W quadrants of the diamond. CY was located at MP 101.95 in Vermillion County, Illinois. Sometime before 1952, a wye track was installed just south of here at MP 104.40 along with coal and water facilities, and was named Coalton. Also installed was 3 miles of double-track. Now, the KB&S owns both lines with only the S/E wye in place. The diamond is gone and the NKP's former main does not extend any further west than this point. In the LE&W days, there was a water station here also. This was located at MP 88.7 on the NKP. Photo by John Fuller. Posted for Jack Shoemaker.

Thanks to KBS, Cheneyville has 3 of it original spokes. The west spoke, NS/NW/NKP/Lake Erie and Western, was abandoned to Gibson City by NW.

Eric Berg commented on his above posting
Here is the John W. Barriger shot of Cheneyville, looking north from a passenger special in 1938. Train was southbound.
[The tower still had both stories.]

Richard Howard posted, cropped
Cheneyville depot.
Richard Fiedler shared
Richard Fiedler shared

It must be the rectangle in the southwest quadrant of main road and the tracks because if it was the rectangle in the northeast quadrant, we would see a grain elevator in the background.

1940 Aerial Photo from ILHAP

All of the grain bins on the west side of town are gone, but they did add to big silos.

Satellite

Topeka, KS: Three Cargill Elevators and Some Others

I already had a posting on the largest Cargill elevator.

All three elevators are built along the Union Pacific tracks.

Cade Smith posted
This is the smallest of the three Cargill elevators in North Topeka.
[1,026,000  Satellite]

Cade Smith posted
Cargill North Topeka elevator, one of three.
Jan Normandale almost 16 cars long... almost 3 1/2 football fields long.
[11,988,000  Satellite]

Cade Smith posted
This is the largest of the three Cargill elevators in North Topeka.
[24,636,000 Satellite]

Even the local Fairview Mills is pretty good sized and rail served.

Update: Another comment added to the posting:
Brent A. Harrison According to the UPRR grain elevator directory, there are four listings for Cargill in Topeka. Flour terminal, 1,500,000 bushel capacity, South Flour terminal, 300,000 bushel capacity, West grain elevator, 2,200,000 bushel capacity, and Cargill Inc with a 5,500,000 bushel capacity. Hope this helps.


The original capacity numbers seemed too big. They must be using a unit other than bushels. But Brent's numbers seem too low. Maybe there are a lot of silos that can no longer be used, for whatever reason.

Cade Smith took sunrise pictures of three elevators in a row and of Ag Partners (satellite).

Keiv Spare posted
North Topeka, Kansas. January 2017
[Another view of the "smallest" elevator.]

Keiv Spare posted
Topeka, Kansas. January 2017
[Even though Keiv labeled this as Topeka, it looks like the "middle" elevator that Cade labels as North Topeka. According to Google Map, it is Topeka.]

Jerry Krug commented on the above posting, cropped
Here's the same elevator from June 2016 at a slightly different angle. It's hard to describe how overwhelming the size of this structure is.
[Fairview Mills is in the background.]

Update

Bob Summers posted five photos with the comment:

Topeka, the Capitol, is in northeastern Kansas.  Chalmers & Borton built a warehouse in 1936 for Topeka Flour Mill.  I think it likely their elevator was the old timer in the first picture.  Richard Risley, was this an early ADM facility back in your time with them?  Obviously was still in operation in the mid 1970’s when the Mac bag house would have been placed on top of the head house in order to comply with the new EPA regulations for grain dust emissions.  The C&B records do not mention that they were involved in either of the annexes on this terminal elevator equipped with official certified bulk scales.  The tall head house is the clue for that. Found a listing as 1.7 million bushel Topeka Terminal LLC, part of Ag Partners headquartered in Hiawatha, Kansas. 

The first elevator built in Topeka in 1940 by Chalmers & Borton was a 500,000 bushel terminal for Farmers Union, shown in the next two photos.  A small 150,000 bushel annex was built in 1941 by C&B.  The  larger annex on the west end appears to be a Sampson build, probably added in the 1950’s.  

An all new 10,000,000 bushel hex bin terminal elevator was built for Farmers Union in 1958.  This was about the time several small regional grain marketing cooperatives merged to form Far-Mar-Co., a large regional grain marketing cooperative owned by the local co-ops throughout the region.  Both of these terminal elevators were acquired by Cargill, probably in the 1990’s. 

The last photo in this posting on elevators in Topeka was known as Shawnee Terminal, owned by Fairfield Mills in Seneca Kansas. I have no older history or contractor information on this elevator, but the oversized head house was likely originally for the grain cleaning equipment that an elevator for a flour mill would need.  The capacity per the 2008 KGFA Kansas Grain Elevator Directory was 1,557,000 bushels.  I cannot find it in the 2023 Directory.  My next elevator post will be on another large terminal in Topeka.  All photos taken in June of 2020.

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Great Falls, MT: Grain Processing Plants

Andrew Tuttle posted

Looking at a satellite image, it becomes clear that this General Mills elevator that Andrew photographed supports a processing plant of some sort.

Satellite

While looking for this facility, I found other grain processing plants and/or elevators in Great Falls.

Satellite

Satellite

Update:

Ken Bryan posted
General Mills Elevator & Flour Mill
March 2016

Ken Bryan posted
A couple BN originals, BNSF 1846 (SD40-2) & BNSF 2092 (GP38-2) from the mid-70's, rolling into the Great Falls yard with the CHS elevator looming in the background.
Joe Jenkins 2092 is still in Great Falls MT and runs the same paint and does the Moccasin Local.

Great Falls, MT: GN Roundhouse, GN & Milwaukee Depots and Grain Elevators

GN Depot: (Satellite)

Milw Depot: (Satellite)

Satellite

Great Northern used to have two branches going to this town. It looks like the one to the northeast still runs to Fort Benton. The fork to the southwest still goes to Helena. The fork to the northwest still goes all the way to the mainline in Shelby. The fork to the southeast connects to the former Northern Pacific mainline just east of Laurel. BNSF evidently still owns the GN route here.

The Milwaukee went across today's River's Edge Trail Bridge and then north of the depot along the river.

Great Northern Depot:

Street View, Jul 2008

Milwaukee Depot:

Street View, Oct 2021

Harvey LaRocque posted
This picture was captioned : Construction of the Milwaukee Depot in Great Falls, MT. 1915. A real ghost in the making. It was shared on a group called remember Great Falls When……

Ira Silverman commented on Harvey's post

Dennis DeBruler commented on Ira's comment
Thanks. The contemporary photo motivated me to find it.
https://www.google.com/.../@47.5063143.../data=!3m1!1e3...

 

Drew Carr posted
Great Falls, Montana train station

 

Ron Reiring posted
Former Milwaukee Road station in Great Falls, MT. Built in 1915 along the banks of the Missouri River. Tracks are gone and the station is now used by private businesses.
Jim Kelling shared
Great Falls, Montana (Milwaukee Road)

1955 Gore Hill and 1951 Great Falls Quads @ 62,500

While following the Milwaukee route through town, I noticed this Grain Craft flour mill. Is the facility on the left part of Grain Craft or is it another company? Both are obviously rail served.

3D Satellite

This elevator is along the original route of the Milwaukee. BNSF now owns this remnant as an industrial spur. I think this is the smallest elevator that I have seen that is rail served by a Class I railroad.

3D Satellite

I'm so used to seeing General Mill plants being closed that it is nice to see one that is still operating. I included the pasta plant because it makes sense to locate a consumer of flour next to a flour mill.

3D Satellite

These hoppers are for shipping flour because they have the pipes on the bottom that are used for pneumatic unloading.

Street View, Oct 2021