Gas plant tank car loading platform

Old industrial remains are a natural attractant to the BIGDoer.com crew and in this post we take a quick look at an old tank car loading station. Located deep in the middle of nowhere on the Alberta prairies, it sits along an abandoned railway branch line. The station was fed from a nearby plant and products loaded here were pressurized gas (propane, perhaps others).

The track that ran past here was the CPR’s Irricana Subdivision. Most of the product hauled on the line was grain, with some petroleum products (loaded here) and other chemicals handled now and then. The line was built just over a century ago and closed in the mid-2000s. This loading platform, I understand, was the line’s last customer. Remains of the old spur can still be seen buried deep in the grass.

Seen nearby is the town’s grain elevator and if one looks closely in the right direction, a pair of railway graves, belonging to track workers who died on the job so long ago.

Pump that gas…
Compressor Plant.

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found.

If you need any more information on what we talked about here, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: September, 2014.
Location: Chancellor, AB.
This site is not publicly accessible.

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Chancellor AB gas plant

The platform was used to load railway tank cars with gas.

Gas loading station

Excess or waste gas was flared off here.

Railway graves

The graves of some railway workers can be seen in the distance.

Chancellor AB grain elevator

The town’s grain elevator in back.

Tank car loading platform

The station was supplied by a nearby plant.

Gas plant loading station

The abandoned railway roadbed can be seen in back.

4 responses

  1. Bob Niznik says:

    Read about the gravesite in a Greg McDonnell book (about the Canadian Pacific Railway). Myself and one of my brothers visited the site in July, 2007. I very much enjoy all of your posts about railways and historic rural sites such as this one! I grew up in such a setting (Irricana, AB), and am saddened that much of that no longer exists.

    • We saw it in his book too and it was Greg who showed us the way. So pleased you like what we do. We are so passionate about all the history and saddened that it’s being lost at an incredible rate. We’ll keep documenting! Please, stop by often and comment share when you can. It really helps.

  2. Tim Swaren says:

    (via Facebook)
    There’s one of these along Hwy 12 just west of Nevis, AB too, Chris! Great pics.

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