Finishing the Job: Part 1 - Grain Elevators of the CN Rossburn Subdivision

On April 30th I set out on my last marathon Manitoba grain elevator trip. I had about two dozen elevators left to photograph, and this trip would get all but one of them. I did my planning and on the evening of April 29th, I was ready to go. My camera was charged, I had a zillion podcasts on my phone, and my wife thought I was crazy. She might be right.

My alarm went off at 3:00 AM and I jumped out of bed. OK, maybe I just rolled out of bed. After a quick shower and breakfast of toast and milk, I was off.

First up on the podcast list was A Modelers Life. With one "L" (inside joke).

Yes, that's 3:22 AM

I hit the road, headed west to Portage la Prairie then up highway 16 through Gladstone.

Gladstone

As I approached Happy Rock Gladstone, I decided to take a few minutes to photograph the new Parrish and Heimbecker grain elevator on the CN Gladstone sub just off the highway.

I took a side road and set up my tripod for a long exposure shot. 30 seconds did the trick!

A concrete dream

That was my first new grain elevator.. not planned, but I'll take it!

After grabbing some breakfast at McDonald's a Scottish restaurant in Neepawa, I carried on through downtown Minnedosa, then headed north on highway 262 to Clanwilliam, the first on my list.

Clanwilliam

When I arrived at 6:19 AM, the sun was above the horizon but not quite above the trees yet.

The grain elevator in Clanwilliam, Manitoba

The elevator sits alone on Railway Avenue (of course) and is no longer in use. I understand it was last used 6 or 7 years ago. The CN Rossburn subdivision used to run between a point near Neepawa and Russell, but all that was abandoned back in 1996.

This elevator has two discharge pipes on the railway side. Any guesses why there are two?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

There are two because the longer one was for loading grain into the (side) door of grain boxcars and the shorter one was for loading into the tops of grain hoppers. Simple, right?

The elevator is not in great shape, but certainly better than some I've seen.

So that was Clanwilliam.

On to Sandy Lake!

Sandy Lake

The Sandy Lake grain elevator

The grain elevator in Sandy Lake dominates the skyline, as elevators often do. It helps that it is up on a ridge, above the cottages and houses that dot the shores of the lake.

Compare this elevator to Clanwilliam's and you'll notice a few things:

• This annex still has a peaked roof, unlike Clanwilliam's which has machinery/piping on the top;
• Sandy Lake's roofs have been replaced
• The cladding has been patched here

It turns out that Sandy Lake's elevator is privately owned by Lewandowski Farms.

Lots of interesting piping here!

Just for fun, I recorded a short walk-around video.

By this time I was running behind schedule... the elevators were just too interesting, I guess! I resolved to try to pick the pace up.

Of course, as I approached Oakburn, I had to stop and take a few photos... even though it wasn't new to me. But first I noticed this:

Milepost 65 of the CN Rossburn subdivision

A milepost! Oakburn's siding was mile 65.6. There was another milepost still existing on the other side of Oakburn too.

Oakburn

I was here in late 2014 so I didn't linger very long. The annex doesn't look like it is leaning any more.

More on the Oakburn grain elevator...

I drove past Vista - which used to have a few grain elevators - and on to Rossburn, namesake of the subdivision that used to go through here.

Rossburn

The Rossburn grain elevator is located in the heart of the town. It looked to me like it is still being used. I was impressed by how bold the lettering is on the elevator... no wear at all. I wonder if they were reapplied recently.

Elevator selfie

I had to take a selfie here. I was taking one or two photos of each elevator with my iPhone, just in case I had problems with the SD card in my camera. I'm paranoid that way.

At this point it was 8:40 AM and I had been up for close to 6 hours. Go caffeine go!

I was taking pictures of the Ukrainian churches that I found, like I did last summer. I'll publish them in a separate post later.

After photographing Rossburn, it was on to Birdtail. I punched the GPS coordinates into my phone's map application, as I had been doing, and went on my way.

Birdtail

No elevator :(

The elevator wasn't there.

I hadn't been 100% sure that there was still an elevator at Birdtail. There was no Street View available and the satellite view of the area was old. Still, a little disappointing.

The Birdtail grain elevator was a wooden structure with no annex. It was labelled for Tanasychuk Farm according to old photos of the elevator.

There was no sign of it, so I carried on. At least I caught up on some time!

Angusville

The grain elevator in Angusville is interesting. There is a garage attached to the elevator, where the annex used to be.

I spoke with the owners - who moved here from Scotland a few years ago - and they don't know much about the elevator itself. It's not used and in fact the garage is blocking the driveway doors on the elevator.

The office appears to still be intact. There is a pile of timbers out back that might be from the demolished annex.

After visiting these towns, I have a couple of tips for you if you choose to go elevator fanning:

• Leave the town by a different route than you came in, if possible - you might see something else interesting on the way; and
• Always look back - you might get a cool view.

This was my look back for Angusville:

On to Silverton and its very interesting elevator(s).

Silverton

Old house and grain elevator, Silverton

I had to stop and include this old house in the shot. It looks like someone was stripping the house down to its bones.

The Silverton grain elevator is obviously a former UGG elevator. It wears its heritage proudly on the side of the annex and elevator.

Ex UGG grain elevator, Silverton

Note the "B" on the elevator indicating that there was an "A" elevator. My guess is that the Manitoba Pool elevator that used to be in Silverton was the A elevator and this became the B during the six Agricore United years when the UGG merged with Agricore (itself a merger of the Alberta Wheat Pool and Manitoba Pool Elevator). I could be wrong.

I really like the checkerboard look on the cupola of the elevator - very unique in Manitoba.

The elevator looks well maintained, with a new roof. Hopefully it is still serving after so many years!

As it happens, there are two grain elevators in Silverton.

The second is on a nearby farm. I spotted it as I was driving out of town. I took a few shots of the elevator from a public road but didn't get any closer, as it is clearly on private property.

Private elevator, Silverton

I wonder what the history of that elevator is...

Anyway, on to the former terminus of the CN Rossburn subdivision, Russell.

Russell

The grain elevator in Russell, Manitoba

I arrived in Russell to find the ex Manitoba Pool grain elevator to be in fine shape. It is privately owned and apparently still in use for grain storage.

Things are looking up!

The Trans-Canada Trail runs along the former CN line here. Russell used to be a division point on the CNR, with a roundhouse, station and so forth. The CN Rossburn subdivision ended here in a yard, and the CN Tonkin subdivision continued on into Saskatchewan.

Clayton Chaloner contributed his photo of a brace of GMD1s lifting the last loads from the Pool elevator in Russell.

CN 1604 in Russell, photo by Clayton Chaloner

The CP had a presence on the west side of Russell with the CP Russell subdivision running from Binscarth to Inglis. At one time the majority of the grain elevators were on the CP line but there are none there now.

Russell CPR station and grain elevators, early 1900s

Russell is near the large Bunge plant in Harrowby, MB (on the CP Bredenbury subdivision) as well as potash mines in Saskatchewan, so it is a "happening" place.

Speaking of the Bredenbury sub, that's where I went next... to Binscarth. Read on!

In Search of Grain Elevators, Part 1

Sunrise photo, Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, 2014/5/31

Back in April I mentioned that my 2014 project is to photograph as many Manitoba grain elevators as I can. I now have a web site/blog just for that, www.grainelevators.ca. At the time I said I'd photographed almost 40 elevators. Today I'm up to 78.

I've captured pretty much every elevator in easy driving distance of Winnipeg. The bulk of the remaining 100 or so are either in the southwestern part of Manitoba or in the north. Late last month, I decided to do a little road trip to capture eight elevators in one long morning. After the go-ahead from my loving wife ("Do I have to come? Knock yourself out") meticulous planning (thank you, Google Maps and Excel), and a good weather forecast, I set the alarm for "stupid early" on May 30th and went to bed.

"Stupid early" was 03:30 on May 31. Keep in mind this was the end of May so sunrise was pretty early. I was out of the house and on the road before 4 and even then there was a bit of light in the sky. I drove up from south Winnipeg to the Trans-Canada Highway and headed west. My target area was north of the TCH in the triangle between Portage la Prairie, Carberry and Gladstone.

As I passed Elie, I decided to photograph the elevator there against the lightening sky.

Elie grain elevator

Sadly no train came along, and I didn't have time to wait. I continued on to Portage, photographing the Viterra elevator at Tucker just east of Portage on the CP Carberry subdivision. Still no sun!

Tucker grain elevator

I drove through Portage, since I hadn't seen the CP station since they placed the caboose there. It looked nice in the poor light... although the sun was almost up.

CP Station in Portage la Prairie

I knew they had a caboose (CP 434560) but I didn't realize they had a baggage-express car (CP 404231). According to this page, the car was scrapped in Brandon, but obviously it was not.

When I finished photographing the station, I noticed a headlight off to the west. It turned out to be a CN eastbound and I had to try to photograph it passing the station. At 5:15 AM you have to be creative. I set the shutter speed to 1/20s, locked onto the station and waited for the train to come into the frame.

CN 8003 in Portage la Prairie

I did a pan shot, mostly to capture the engine number. It actually worked out pretty well, I think.

CN 8003 Pan

This was not my first sighting of CN 8003!

That was fun, but I had elevators to photograph! I headed out of town but very shortly I saw a train rolling east against the rising sun, which had finally ascended above the horizon. I pulled over to the side of the highway and took a little silhouette photo - the lead photo of this post. Techniques for taking sunrise/sunset photos is probably the subject for another post. You can't just point your camera at the sun and shoot, because the sun will be over-exposed and just be a big white hole in the photo. The essential thing is to crank the exposure compensation way down to ensure the sun isn't blown out.

At MacGregor, I turned north on "highway" 650 and headed toward the Katrime grain elevator. It's a dirt road but it was in pretty good condition. Shortly before Katrime, I crossed the CN Gladstone subdivision at mile 21.98.

The town of Katrime is a pretty small community, basically just a few houses and a grain elevator. The elevator is a former Manitoba Pool elevator. It looks like it may be in private use but it has no rail access, as the siding was removed some time ago and it doesn't show up on CN timetables any more.

I have posts for each of the elevators up on the grainelevators.ca site, but here's a photo for Katrime.

Katrime grain elevator

After I documented that thoroughly, I continued north on "highway" 650 toward Gladstone. This section of road was terrible. I was driving my Honda Civic and it was clearly not the right vehicle for the heavy ruts in this road. It was touch and go to avoid bottoming out, but fortunately I made it out without any scraping.

Once on the Yellowhead (highway 16), it was clear sailing toward Gladstone. I spotted an unknown-to-me elevator at a farm (the Steele Bridge Farm elevator) and photographed it, then carried on toward Gladstone.

Very soon after that, I spotted a headlight in the distance. Could it be... a train? Very soon it became obvious that it was indeed a Canadian Pacific train on the CP Minnedosa subdivision - my first. I picked a spot and pulled over to wait for it to come to me.

CP 9752 near Gladstone

I was feeling pretty good - three trains and two new grain elevators so far!

I went into Gladstone to photograph the elevator there. CN and CP parallel each other here, much like Portage la Prairie, except of course both the CN Gladstone and CP Minnedosa subdivisions are fairly low traffic lines. There's even a diamond in town, just like Portage.

Anyway, I wasn't there for railfanning, so I shot the elevator and got out of Happy Rock.

Shark's Teeth - buy this print

From Gladstone I set off for the grain elevator at Helston. This is an old elevator that was on the CN Neepawa subdivision. I stayed on pavement on highway 34 until I had to turn west. A few turns here and there on dirt roads (thank you, GPS) found me in the small community of Helston. After dodging a (live) skunk, I parked and walked about five minutes in to see the lovely old Pool elevator.

Come Into the Light - buy this print

There's more information in my post about Helston. It appears to be unused, except perhaps for target practice - there are quite a few spent shotgun shells around. A few of the doors are open but I did not go in.

I really enjoyed this elevator. It's beautiful and the light was just great. The only problem were the many, many black flies. Guess who forgot their bug spray? I was wearing a hoodie in the selfie below for the flies, not the temperature!

Helston Grain Elevator Selfie

After Helston, I went back north to Arden. The former Manitoba Pool grain elevator at Arden is on the CP Minnedosa subdivision. I don't think the elevator is active, although it still has a siding.

Arden grain elevator

After that, it was back south to head to Oberon, Brookdale, Mentmore and more and more!

On to part 2!