Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Sintaluta, Among Others

Sintaluta, Saskatchewan
As I mentioned back in June, I wanted to go take shots of the grain elevators at Sintaluta, Saskatchewan. While staying in Regina at the beginning of August, I had a chance to go do just that. I headed out of Regina near sunrise on August 1 in search of grain elevators. I drove past Balgonie, McLean, Qu'Appelle, and Indian Head and arrived at Sintaluta.

There are two elevators in Sintaluta, one former Pool elevator and one former National elevator. Here's the National one, now displaying signs for "Sintaluta Seed Cleaning" and "Whispering Pine Farms". It evolved into quite a complex of buildings and tanks.
Sintaluta National grain elevator
The word National is showing through on this trackside view.
Grain elevator in Sintaluta, SK
The other elevator in town is a former Saskatchewan Pool elevator.
Sintaluta ex-Pool elevator
Anyone know what the leaf / star logo is at the top of the elevator? The logo at the top of the elevator commemorates the 1967 Centennial celebrations. The elevator at Kronau, SK also has this.

The rest of Sintaluta is pretty depressing. It is a textbook example of a formerly bustling Prairie town that has fallen into decay. Very sad.

I started back toward Regina with the intent of shooting along the way. As I approached Indian Head, I saw a train pulling out of the town. I pulled over to grab a few shots of CP 8603 East in charge of an intermodal train.
CP 8603 near Indian Head SK
You can see the modern inland terminal in the background on the left.

I shot the Indian Head elevators again, then continued on to Qu'Appelle. There is no elevator in Qu'Appelle, but there is a seed handling facility there, Seedtec-Terramax.
Seedtec-Terramax in Qu'Appelle, SK
From the looks of the track, and the stored flatcars on it, they don't use rail service.

There was one more elevator to shoot, the massive concrete Pioneer inland terminal here between Balgonie and MacLean.
Pioneer grain elevator
I didn't have time to shoot the Viterra elevator at Balgonie... next time.

On my way into Regina I saw a grain train waiting to go east at Kearney, so I did a quick detour to shoot CP 9683 and 3030 as they patiently waited.
CP 9683 at Kearney near Regina, SK
Mission accomplished!

3 comments:

Tyler said...

The leaf logo is the symbol used during the Canadian centennial celebrations of 1967. I always assumed the elevtor was resheathed or repainted sometime during the surge in patriotism of the late 60s.

Canadian Train Geek said...

Thanks, Tyler. After your comment I looked it up in Wikipedia and here it is.

Eric said...

It's a sad but probably legalistic reality that the elevator logos have to be expunged from the elevator sides. That's the company's way of saying "We're outta here, see ya Sintaluta" after years of community involvement. Of course it's easy to see which company it was - a coat of paint can't hide a distinctive logo.
Eric