Southwest Manitoba Elevator Trip, Part 3 - All Manitoba Pool All The Time

Back in August 2014 I took two days (Aug 8-9) to photograph every grain elevator in southwest Manitoba. Here's part 1 and part 2.

In part 2 we covered three towns, Killarney, Ninga and Boissevain - a short distance but a lot of elevators!

From Boissevain I carried on to Deloraine to view a series of ex-Manitoba Pool elevators.

Deloraine

The Deloraine grain elevator, west of town, is owned by Nestibo Agra and apparently used to process sunflowers and other plants. I didn't get very close as it is clearly private property and in use.

You can see where the Manitoba Pool roundel was on the side, above the name.

This elevator has two annexes, one on each side.

Deloraine is mile 89.9 on the CP Napinka subdivision. I don't know if this elevator is still served by rail or not. In downtown Deloraine there are several tracks, unusual for a small town like this...

...until you realize that Deloraine was a rail hub of sorts in the past. The former CP Lyleton subdivision started here until it was abandoned in 1996. Also, Deloraine was served by the CN Wakopa subdivison until 1961, which as I mentioned in part 1 also served Lena and Holmfield.

Next up...

Waskada

The Waskada grain elevator is right smack in the middle of town. You can tell who last owned this elevator...

You may know that Agricore was the successor to the Manitoba Pool Elevators, and was formed by the merger of MPE and the Alberta Wheat Pool in 1998.

It was not clear to me whether this elevator was still in use or not.

By this time I had really entered Bakken shale oil country. Oil wells were everywhere and there were lots of construction workers around. Every little hotel and rooming place had opened up and were advertising, and I saw an engineering company had taken an old house in Waskada to use as their office building.

These were outside Boissevain... and were a common sight in the "bottom left" corner of Manitoba.

Next up...

Dalny

At first I wasn't sure I had the right place, but I double checked my GPS coordinates and this was it. The Dalny grain elevator (labeled "MAN. POOL") is in the middle of a field, surrounded by canola and oil wells. I saw no evidence that there ever was a town here.

According to "Rapid City: Our Past for the Future" Dalny originally had a Lake of the Woods elevator.

Dalny was also on the CP Lyleton subdivision.

After taking the requisite photos, I moved on.. until a look back showed this scene.

I love canola.

Next up on the Lyleton subdivision:

Coulter

As you can see, it is labeled for McKinney Farms.

I think the annex has developed a bit of a lean.

Coulter is a quiet and tiny town. The elevator has seen better days and it doesn't look like it is in use any more.

If you refer to my trip plan at the top of part 1 of this series, I was scheduled to drive from Coulter to Cameron. However, I diverted from this plan. I was running ahead of schedule all day. I was scheduled to leave Coulter at 18:56 but I took my last photo there at 17:13, a full hour and a half ahead of schedule. I decided to knock Elva off the list while I was in the area, rather than have to double back from Melita next morning.

I'll tackle Elva in the next post, as it was quite a place to visit, certainly one of my favourites from this trip. Here's a little teaser photo.

Thanks for reading!

PS I was thinking about my blog a few days ago and I realized I might have the longest-running railway blog in the world. I started blogging in July 2005 and here's my first post. What do you think? :)

Carry on to part 4!