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Sounds like this elevator is set to be demolished from what I’m hearing.
The wheat through Thunder Bay doesn’t flow like she used to…I wonder how many elevators are still active ??
Things were bustling when I was there for the five or so days last week. Saw CN and CP both lift/spot Viterra A and B two or three times each, and CP was basically spotting unit grain trains with GEs when they worked that facility. CN still serves nearby Canada Malting as well. Quite a bit further east from there is Viterra C and a Richardson elevator as well – both still busy. There are a couple of active ones further west as well – including G3. I saw the CN yard job pull a 197 car train out of that area the one day, and aside from 8 or 9 cars from McAsphalt, it was all grain empties and in excess of 2 miles in length. So all told I would say there are a half dozen or so still very much active – probably about the same number as inactive.
Saw unit grain trains come into town for both CN and CP. As soon as I got there a G862 came into town on CN (unit grain loads) – this in addition to whatever grain comes in on the daily manifest from Winnipeg (436). On CP I saw quite a few unit grain loads come into town, as well as unit grain empties leaving. The unit grain empties were typically in the order of 224 cars.
Saw a number of ships coming and going from the elevators as well.
I don’t really have a personal baseline to which to compare the above-mentioned activity to, however.
A few years back Russia surpassed Canada as the largest producer of wheat in the world, and considering that in the Soviet era Russia was a major importer / customer of Canadian Wheat, you can see how things have changed. When we shipped bagged wheat or flour from Port Colborne the fabric bags were marked in Cyrillic (Russian Text) for EXPORT BREAD program…A different world for sure