Along the Stewart Southern (2015), Part 1

This is a “reprint” of a series I posted back in August 2015.

The Stewart Southern Railway is one of the many shortline railways in Saskatchewan. I mentioned their start back in 2010. We were in Saskatchewan at the beginning of August to visit family and friends and I negotiated some time to see the Stewart Southern.

I went out early on August 2 to head down Highway 33 toward Stoughton.

The Stewart Southern acquired a portion of the CP Tyvan subdivision, at one time the longest stretch of straight track in the world. They interchange with CP in Regina and their track basically parallels highway 33 all the way to Stoughton.

It was a beautiful morning… at least at the start.

Richardson

My first stop was in Richardson at 7 AM to see the Legumex Walker facility there.

There were no cars there but the May 2015 Street View shows grain cars, so I have to assume it is still a rail customer.

Kronau

Next up on the line was the grain elevator at Kronau. This is a former Saskatchewan Wheat Pool (SWP) elevator. It has no annex but has a couple of large bins for extra storage.

There were a few cars spotted at the siding.

Note the 1867-1967 Centennial logo on the elevator. There are only a few remaining with the logo. I saw it on one of the two Sintaluta elevators.

Lajord

Next is a siding and stub track at Lajord. There was a string of oil tankers there, complete with buffer cars on one end.

Note there are a couple of tracks there.

There was a beautiful large Pioneer grain elevator in Lajord. Back in 1964 Lajord had three elevators: the Pioneer, a National Grain Company elevator, and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool grain elevator.

After leaving Lajord, I ran into some serious morning fog. Visibility grew quite short and I had to slow down below highway speed on several occasions as I couldn’t see far enough ahead.

Sedley

The grain elevator at Sedley was barely visible in the fog.

Disappointing… but not the first disappointment.

Francis

Francis, SK was also socked in and I could barely see its grain elevator.

Osage

It was clearing a bit at Osage but it still wasn’t great. The Osage grain elevator is an ex Pool structure, like so many on this line.

I finally broke out of the fog south of Osage, and by the time I arrived at Fillmore, it was blue skies and sunshine. I wasn’t too concerned as I knew I would be heading back on highway 33 and would have another chance at the fogbound grain elevators.

Fillmore

There are two grain facilities at Fillmore, an ex Saskatchewan Wheat Pool grain elevator operated by the SooLine Marketing Group, and a more modern facility operated by Fill-More Seeds Inc. “Pride of the Prairies”.

There was another elevator between these two facilities but apparently it came down. I think it was a United Grain Growers (UGG) elevator.

Rider Pride is everywhere in Saskatchewan.

The SWP logo is somewhat visible on the non track side of the elevator above the word “FILLMORE”. Note the bright yellow fire engine!

I understand at one point the Stewart Southern parked a few locomotives here but none were in evidence.

Creelman

The town of Creelman, SK has two grain elevators joined by a common annex. The larger one appears to be a former SWP elevator but the smaller one is an ex Lake of the Woods Milling Company elevator!

They make quite a handsome pair.

More on the Creelman grain elevators

Next up was Stoughton, the end of the line for the Stewart Southern. I’ll tackle that in the next post, but here’s a teaser…

On to part two

Just One More Thing

I’m reposting this series because I visited the SSR again in 2024, so I can do a little “then and now”, but also because I want to migrate posts from my old Blogger platform to here. The Blogger site is getting more and more invisible on search engines.