While digging through the photo files at the Imperial Sugar Company, I came across a pack of negatives from the Holly Sugar Co.. Imperial had bought out Holly about 10 years ago and shipped a lot of their old historic files to the Sugar Land office. There was no documentation associated with the negative so I am trying to figure out where the photos are from. The beet gondolas are lettered for Denver & Rio Grande so I assume this must be somewhere in Colorado.
The badland look and the low mountains suggest western Colorado, as Boxcab says possibly Grand Junction, but did they not also grow beets in the San Luis Valley? I know there was a sugar beet factory in Ft. Morgan, which is northeastern Colorado (my sister lives there) BUT the mountains don't look right to me and that would be CB & Q country.... John
What's the date on the photos? The cars in one shot had D&RG (no W) reporting marks... Those lines went from Denver-Pueblo-Grand Junction-SLC.
Other thoughts This photograph of a photograph is from Longmont, CO so the trick I think is finding the building or structure in Russ's shot. Maybe we might get lucky using the Denver Library site where Otto's photographs are at. http://photoswest.org/perrycat.htm
Glad to help with the research This section of the Denver Public Library (PhotosWest.org) is a great research tool as well as has a ton of great RR photographs.
What is really neat is the photos were taken the same day of the same cars. #40753 can clearly be read in the photo I posted and the one Darren did.
And as a member of the Rio Grande Modeling and Historical Society, I posted this thread to the list, and there's been quite an interesting conversation going on lately, about sugar beets etc.....As well as a possible fuel source and more! Guess I'll have to see if I can save the messages and repost elsewhere for those interested.
Please do! All I know is those sugar beet factories smell bad...almost as bad as the paper mills in Wisconsin Great shots and great detective work guys, I was off by miles John
