Here's a photo I took on August 23, 1996, TWENTY-SIX YEARS AGO, while making my way across the UP Hoisington Subdivision, a former Missouri Pacific property that has either been downgraded to branchline status, is dormant, or is abandoned.

Here's the depot in the hamlet of Utica (MP 640.3), and this is along that sixty-mile stretch of track that has been abandoned and removed. When this photo was taken, it looked like the station was in pretty good shape and was perhaps still being used. Perhaps the Maintenance of Way people were using it. A lot of the line had to be accessed by hi-rail vehicles. In many cases the line meandered through farm fields and there were no parallel access roads.

Here's a GOOGLE Streetview image that shows what the area looked like in June of 2008. The tracks are gone and the station looks to be totally abandoned.

[goo.gl]

An aerial photo taken later shows the station has been bulldozed:

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E.T.T.S.