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Railway elevator played an important part in town's grain trade

The Midland Railway Company starting building the wooden elevator in the 1880s we learn in our first weekly historical feature
2020-02-20 rh
In this historic image, the Schooner Blain is offloading grain at the town elevator. Copyright René Hackstetter, Feb.18, 2020. All rights reserved.

We hope you enjoy this new feature providing glimpses into the region's interesting past. It will run in this space every week so please check back each Saturday.

Postcard Memories is a weekly series of historic postcard views and photos submitted by René Hackstetter.

The Midland Railway Company commenced construction of this wooden elevator in 1881.

Pictured here in 1904, the town elevator's initial capacity was a quarter-million bushels, which was eventually increased to half a million. Grain cargoes ran from 16,000 to 25,000 bushels, occasionally topping out at 30,000 bushels, which was considered a very large load.

The first superintendent was William Henderson, author George R. Osborne tells us in his book Midland and Her Pioneers, while the first weighman was John Preston Sr. and the engineer was William T. Dudley.

Unfortunately, the elevator was struck by lightning on Sunday morning, April 24, 1904 and was subsequently completely destroyed by the ensuing fire.

And while both Dudley and John Wheeler narrowly escaped with their lives, sadly young Fred Tremblay lost his life when he tried to rescue his boat from under the dock. He was only 17 years old.

These aforementioned names are some of Midland’s early pioneers.

George Dudley, a well-known local lawyer who was also colourfully known as "Mr. Hockey," was the son of William T. Dudley.

One of Preston's three sons, John Jr., later became partners with James Playfair and formed Playfair Preston, a local store on King Street.