The Isleton flood in June 1972 was the death knell to the Isleton Branch. Prior to that the line had a slight resurgence in 1970 and 1971 with the increase in sugar beet loadings in Isleton just behind the elementary school and outbound grain cars at the Isleton Elevators, which still exist. At peak season during those years service was about once a week. Heinz built a brand new pickle plant around 1970 next to the sugar beet loader with the premise of using rail. There was some freight activity in Walnut Grove, I think Harvey Lyman received dry fertilizer loads. SP actually did a major tie job I think in the Spring of 1970 from the train bridge to Isleton.

After Isleton flooded the line from Walnut Grove to the bridge became a big RIP track for sugar beet cars. The writing was on the wall when a line is used for a parking lot. Tyler Island was a big string of bad ordered sugar beet cars. When needed cuts of cars were taken out to be rehabbed or possibly scrapped. The siding in Walnut Grove was used to run around box cars, I don't know who received boxcars besides Harvey Lyman. The track from the train bridge to Isleton was never rehabbed, the sugar beet loader in town was dismantled and Heinz rebuilt the pickle plant but it was all trucked. The grain elevator is on the river side so it continued on with trucks and barges transporting grain. I saw the last train out of Walnut Grove, at the crossing at Twin Cities Road in 1978, the last cut of sugar beet cars. In the summer of 1979 I worked at the McCormack Ranch packing shed near that crossing, it was rail served and they had just pulled the tracks up.

I believe if it was not for the Isleton flood and this line might have survived if it made it to deregulation and the the Staggers Act in 1980.