Grain Train 1989

Some nice video here from 1989 showing the CP rail train picking up a long line of grain cars. Probably some of my grain in there. Fast forward to today and the elevators and rails are all gone. They disappeared in the early 2000s.

1989 Grain Train

My grain train pales in comparison.

(quoted from post at 14:51:11 12/14/20) My grain train pales in comparison.

Click to expand...

Looks like a pretty good train for the size of the locomotive. That CP train in the video had 4 engines and I didn't count how many grain cars.

I must be hungry. Thought your title said "gravy train" at first. Lol! Yep, long gone are most of those prairie skyscrapers. Just not enough capacity anymore & it's more efficient for the railroads to centralize their pickup & drop points. Makes the shareholders happy & does little for anyone else involved.

Nice to see the older standard cab SD units with the CP "Pac Man" paint jobs.

Mike

Back in the 70s and 80s all the grain got hauled 100 miles from the coops to the port in Shokopee MN by semi.

Now a days some goes to ethanol plants locally, feed mills locally, and several unit train loops in the 75 mile circle. Beans get trucked 30-50 mile trip to one of the local crushers.

Anyhow, trains and corn made a real comeback here with the rail loops, 105 car units, and the demand in the past fix northwest instead of floating down the misssippi.

Our farm in central MinnesOta was dissected by the Soo-Line. It ran from Duluth down through central MinnesOta and probed its fingers west into the grain belt of the Dakotas. Grain was it’s prime freight with occasional gondolas of steel and rock and some lumber heading back west. During harvest time the trains were heavy and long. That is all gone now. Given way to recreational trails. I scratch my head over that, but ultimately it makes my hair fall out. Back in the early 60’s (before my time) they tipped one off on our farm. They mobilized for clean up, but left a lot of grain behind. Pa said the cows ate good that winter. The mixture of rye, wheat, and flax made them shiny, fat, and full of milk.

When I was a kid we lived a mile from a Pool elevator. This was when steam engines were still in use. Many times, in the fall, there'd be long grain trains, all boxcars at that time. Everyone was waiting for some cars to come in, then they'd have a quota they could haul in for sale. No
price subsidies, but each farmer was rationed according to how many acres he had, and got a quota of perhaps 2 bushels (per acre). Anyway, I often heard the steamer trying hard to get the train moving. Sometimes it would go off like a machine gun. The wheels would be slipping.
I often waited by the track on the way home from country school. The CNR train ran on about a 200 mile loop, going clockwise one day and counterclockwise the next. Hauling empties out and loads back. On Fridays, they made two trips with passenger cars and a baggage/mail car. That was the day we could go to the city for shopping and doctoring and get back home the same day.

Our little town had an elevator, a RR station, a livestock corral, a country store, a post office, and a gas pump. Total population: 2. The one man and his wife filled all the roles and positions. By the way, the train also picked up cream cans for the dairy 10 miles down the line.

It's all gone now, including me. Some of the steam engines may be seen in Moose Jaw or Battleford. A CNR locomotive that used to sit at the fairgrounds in Prince Albert was finally moved to Alberta to be refurbished and run on a tourist excursion track.
Untitled URL Link

I’m near what was the DM&E, Canadian Pacific bought most of it. (Didn’t realize they still designated it the Soo.)It was getting pretty dilapidated until the DM&E chased after running coal from Wyoming to the Mississippi. Ultimately that never happened, but they did some upgrades as they worked on that and even ended up putting in welded track. Meanwhile the ethanol plants and grain loops added some traffic and made the rail workable again.

The line north of me is in bad shape, it was basically bankrupt and dead several times, but the govt and rotating ownership groups kept stringing it along until it too got an ethanol plant and some rail loops on it, and seems to be functioning again. It is still a poor track, very beat up sloppy slow track, but is maybe off its death bed. It used to haul a lot of rock. Still running on fumes.

Actually rail to the Pacific Northwest has been very slow for several years, as China quit buying, but it has ramped up again the last few months, probsbly saw more grain trains the past 3 months than I saw the previous three years.

Paul

Being a retired MoPac railroader, I will always remember the grain rush season. Pretty much worked trip after trip being called out on legal rest for weeks for next trip. Moved a lot of grain. Consist of SD 40's were work horses. No more trains for me, just enjoying my old tractors and sleeping in my own bed every night.

In the last few decades new grain elevators (and most ethanol plants) seem to have been built at the intersections of two major highways, a well maintained rail line and close enough to connect to a natural gas line.

Here in central Siberia grain trains run 140 to 150 cars with 4 locomotives. Canadian National. They know how to run a railroad.

(quoted from post at 17:34:21 12/14/20) When I was a kid we lived a mile from a Pool elevator.

It's all gone now, including me. Some of the steam engines may be seen in Moose Jaw or Battleford.

Click to expand...

That train station used to be the hub of the community. And really these were all pretty much railway towns that popped up as the rail construction moved West. Mostly ten miles or less apart so the farmers hauling with horse and wagon (or sleigh) could make the trip in a day.
Now most of these branch lines have disappeared or are drastically shortened. Most of the old wooden elevators gone. Its 20 to 30 miles to my closest delivery points now. Putting all that grain traffic on the highways in trucks now.
This was our rail station in the early 1920s.

I'm somewhere in the vicinity of paul who posted below. Canadian Pacific now is the railroad here and is heavily loaded with corn to ethanol plants and carrying the ethanol away. Not sure where they take the ethanol. Canadian Pacific has a pretty large yard here for the size of our town and their equipment sure looks a lot nicer and newer than the previous DME stuff. DME was Dakota, Minnesota and Eastern.

Great video Rusty and thanks for posting.

(quoted from post at 20:26:36 12/14/20)

Great video Rusty and thanks for posting.

Click to expand...

Thanks Ron and just to be clear, that was not my video. I just posted the link. I can't take credit for someone else's work. Deeredon is the channel's name. You'll see some really nice older John Deere tractors in a couple of his other videos.

Like a 'real' train, bet it won't stop in its own length, either.

Paul,

That's a nice map of the railroads. Thanks for posting. I wasn't aware of the SOO name still around either.

That looks about like what we had in my home town, we even could leave our cream cans at the station.i think it went to Bismarck,N.D. get the can back again in two days,and the check was in the mailbox, so Dad could pay the 12-15 dollar electricity bill !!! That was in the 1950's !

On flat ground it will, at 10 MPH!! But some of the elevators had a big incline, i guarantee it wont climb it, maybe one at a time!!