Giant Train Plow

My mother's father worked at the Wyoming, Minnesota, train depot before 1920 and the negatives for the following were in his collection - it's likely he was the photographer.  The best guess - based on other negatives we have been able to better date - is that these are from 1917.  There had been a heavy snow and the Northern Pacific Railroad brought in a train pushing a huge wedge plower to clear the tracks.

I didn't understand why the snow to the left of the train was out of focus until it I realized the photographer was standing on top of a boxcar.     This was a water stop - a man can be seen near the water tower with a rope running the operation.

There is a crew with shovels digging around the train, a nasty pre-snowblower job.

You will notice the word "CREX" on the building on the right and in smaller lettering "crex carpets".   This is a warehouse for a carpet-making business.  Wire grass was harvested in what is now Crex Meadows, a Wisconsin wildlife refuge, until 1931.

Like the steam derrick post I sent out previously,  the huge old smoky contraptions have great charm.

This was scene after the train left.  I think the depot itself is just to the right, out of the picture.  My mother and her family lived in train depots when she was growing up.  Although they were good photographers and lived with steam locomotives, they rarely took pictures of them.  These were from an early time when such scenes were probably a novelty.   My mother was born in 1917 - maybe that had something to do with it.