Elevators

by Steve Eshom

One of the most common scenes along the railroad in this part of Montana is the grain elevator. At one time every little town had one and the funny thing is most still exist despite thier replacement by more modern facilities. With the lack of trees in these parts it certainly makes locating the railroad easy as you can stand on any high point and look for the line of elevators. They of course make a great backdrop for modern day railroad photos.

There are four elevators in Stanford. Three are clustered together near ‘downtown’ and another modern facility, capable of loading 110 car trains, is located north of town along with a seed facility. They are certainly the epitome of old and new.

Old Stanford Elevator

New Stanford Elevator and Square Butte

At Moccasin, MT (20 miles south) another modern elevator exists and has a loop for loading full grain trains. On Thursday an empty was delivered there and was partially loaded during the day Friday. This facility sits adjacent to the Central Montana RR interchange.

New Moccasin Elevator

On Saturday we made the two hour trek to Conrad, MT so my mother-in-law could teach a painting class. I took advantage of the trip to see the Great Falls sub. Up there the scheduling is a bit different as the M-LAUSWE leaves Great Falls early in the morning and the M-SWELAU arrives Great Falls sometime in the wee hours of the morning. Our timing was good and not so good. I was able to capture the M-LAUSWE north of Conrad, but unfortunately I missed it crossing the two trestles over Muddy Creek and the Teton River at Collins. Something for next time I guess.

Elevators at Ledger, MT

Sadly this is my final day in Stanford. Look for more photos from this trip here and in my gallery.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 1st, 2007 at 9:36 am and is filed under trip reports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.