Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Grand Forks Elevators and Industrial Locomotives

I swear, this will be my last post on Grand Forks for a while! I know it seems like that's all I post about these days.

On Sunday March 28 I went in search of grain elevators. While I was out, I had the good fortunate to stumble across three industrial locomotives as well.

The first elevator I came across was the North Dakota Mill.
North Dakota Mill
It is quite an impressive structure. The sign says the company has been in business since 1922.

The mill sits at the south end of an industrial park, with quite a few rail-served industries. Farther north is Minn-Dak Seeds.
Minn-Dak Seeds
A BNSF line goes north-south right beside the plant.

Just north of that is a gas storage site, and then I came to Gavilon Grain.
Gavilon Grain in Grand Forks
Hey look! A locomotive!

In fact, it's Con Agra 477.
Con Agra 477 in Grand Forks
It's a high-hood GP7, ex Belt Railway of Chicago. Very nice! There's a couple of photos of it on RRPictureArchives.

Just a bit north of that on the same property was this little beauty.
Peavey 2 at Grand Forks
Peavey #2 is an EMD SW7, ex Atlantic Coast Lines, built in 1950. RRPictureArchives

I was just about out of time at this point, so I headed south on highway 29. As I came to Gateway Drive I saw a bunch of ex-Clinchfield hoppers at the Strata aggregates facility... with a locomotive.
Strata locomotive Grand Forks
Here's engine 230 (an SW9) from a long way off. I wish I had had time to walk across the field to get a closer look but I fell back on the telephoto to get a few quick shots. Maybe next time!

3 comments:

Adam said...

Nice pictures! Those are some good looking engines. I'd like to find a run of locomotives like that.

Eric said...

Keep 'em coming Steve. Grand Forks is in your part of the world, so it's great to share whatever you're seeing. Now, if they could just position those interesting 'critters' closer to the road you're on! Elevators, BN, interesting MoW equipment in yards...it's all good.
Thanks,
Eric

Canadian Train Geek said...

Thanks guys.