As far back as my youth I have been fascinated by the operations of feed and grain elevators and mills and their relation to the railroad. We didn't have many of these facilities in Southern California, especially as the land in and around my neighborhood was being converted from dairy farms into tract homes and shopping centers. But Cerritos and a number of the neighboring cities still had a few farms (mostly dairy) and feed was still brought in from the midwest by rail where it was transferred at these feed mills into trucks for local delivery.

One such feed mill was Coast Grain Co. which was located at 12948 South Pioneer Blvd. in Norwalk, California. The general offices were located on one side of Pioneer Boulevard and the actual mill was directly across the street along, what was then, Southern Pacific's Santa Ana Branch (at MP 498.7). Today this stretch of railroad belongs to Union Pacific and is known as the Santa Ana Industrial Lead.

The plant received a small but steady stream of covered hopper cars and was a frequent source of entertainment for me since it was within bicycling distance from my childhood home in Lakewood. These photographs were taken some time in 1980. Unfortunately Coast Grain Co. was shut down and the facility dismantled in the late 1980s or early 1990s to make room for a shopping center. However the building that housed the original business office for Coast Grain Co. is still there and serves as a tile showroom.