Olney, IL: Grain Elevator and Shortline RR

Update: I rewrote this posting because I visited it some more times to get more pictures and because I evidently forgot I wrote this one. You should probably skip reading this posting and read the newer one instead.

I was headed North towards Olney, IL, and this time I took a side road instead of IL-130 because of a sign that indicated the side road was the way to the business district. 

20141108 0296c

As I turned on the side road, I noticed a locomotive headlight just down a track so I pulled into the first parking lot I found. (I took the picture when I was leaving because it caught me by surprise when I was arriving.) I found a parking lot that let me get next to the engine. But there was a tree line along the track, and the trees still had leaves even though most trees had lost their leaves.

The engine number is 6140, but I'm more interested in the railroad name. I did find a hole in the tree leaves, and by taking several shots at different angles I was able to capture most of the logo. My first guess was CGEI, then CG8. But it is CGB --- Consolidated Grain and Barge. The engine was operating a train that was servicing the grain elevator in Olney. This elevator has been on my todo list because it is a big one. The engine moved forward a little bit while I was taking pictures of the logo. So the cars were being moved forward after they were filled up.

The cars were obviously provided by CSX, and I determined that this line connects to a CSX/B&O track just a few blocks north in Olney.

Google

The track is a remnant of the Illinois Central branch line between Mattoon, IL, and Evansville, IN, that we have seen is abandoned across the Wabash and in Poseyville. The Google road map shows that the track originally extended to County Road 900 North.

Google

But the Google satellite map accurately shows that the track has been abandoned back to County Road 1150 East and that the siding has been torn up except for a little engine stub at the south end. And the engine was parked on the stub.

Google

As I left the area, I took a picture of where the track now terminates. Note the big pile of gravel at the end of the track. Judging by how white the ballast is, I'd say they did do some recent track maintenance and that is the reason they removed track. They can now use the mainline as the siding since there are no longer any other trains using this railroad. Reducing the property tax would be another reason to reduce the trackage.

Fortunately, there was a parking lot next to the section of track that is beside the grain elevator so I was able to get a good shot of the train at the elevator.

It was obvious that the cars were provided by the CSX. In fact, I spotted the fallen flag of two Family Lines System cars.

20141108 0286c

The logo in both cars had the text GEORGIA  CLINCHFIELD  WEST POINT ROUTE.
They have a rather large chute by the concrete silo core for filling the cars. Note the fall protector and the two men watching the cars fill up. This picture is at the camera's resolution.

Back on IL-130, I pulled into the entrance of the elevator and found myself surrounded by trucks. I decided it was a bad day to take pictures of the elevator other than to try to capture a sense of how many trucks were lined up to unload. I wanted to get pictures of all three of their ground storage structures being full, but I can get them some other day. They are not going away, the trucks are. The lineup of trucks curved around to the left and then looped back and came back across the back ground.

The entrance was near the south side of the elevator. The view below is of the north side of the elevator and shows the loop-around in the lineup of trucks.

I noticed later when looking at the pictures, that one of the ground storage units was not completely full. I wonder if they found some defective panels that could not hold grain. I don't remember this structure being used in previous years. It also occurred to me later that there was a big lineup of trucks because they are probably unloading directly into the railroad cars. The elevator probably arranged for some covered hopper cars to be delivered and put the word out to farmers that they could unload the days they were scheduled to have the cars.

I had noticed during this trip that some of the fields still had corn in them even though the harvest season seemed to be over. The corn was still in some fields because there is no place left to store the corn. So the prediction that two years of bumper crops was going to exceed the nation's grain storage capacity proved to be true.

20150104 0101

Update: on a later visit, their engine was parked, and I got a clear shot.

Poseyville: Two Abandoned Railroads and Isolated Grain Elevators

According to my 1928 railroad atlas, the Chicago and Eastern Illinois had a branch line running North from Mt. Vernon, IN, through Poseyville and Owensville and met its mainline north of Fort Branch. The atlas also shows an Illinois Central branch (PD&E) that went through Grayville and across the Wabash to Evansville also went through Poseyville. My 1973 railroad atlas shows both of these lines were still intact, but the IC was owned by Illinois Central Gulf and the C&EI was owned by Louisville & Nashville. Later, the IC branch was abandoned except for the stretch from Poseyville to Evansville. And the CE&I branch was abandoned except for the stretch from Poseyville to Cynthiana. Then this remaining line from Evansville to Poseyville to Cynthiana was abandoned on December 27, 2011. A 2013 Illinois state map and a 2012 Indiana railroad map label the remnant railroad as ISW. So the ISW is a good test of how quickly maps are updated. See below concerning the Google Map.

The ISW still exists but, according to their map, it now operates just 3.8 miles of track in Evansville. I noticed the "v3" (version 3) in the link, so I changed it to v2 and I got another PDF file. Since v1 no longer exists, I made the copy of v2 below which shows the 17 miles they used to operate.

http://www.pioneer-railcorp.com/images/ISW%20map%20v2.pdf

The ISW site still claims that they handle grain, plastics, and rail equipment. But Wikipedia indicates ISW quit handling grain in 2011.

I made a second trip to the feedmill to ask about the impact of the lost of the rail service. He said it wasn't a really big deal because all of their grain is used to make feed for the farmers that store there grain in the elevator. Farmers who want to sell their grain as a cash crop truck it directly to a barge-loading facility in Mt. Vernon, IN. That explains why some of the local farmers have such large storage facilities (see below).

When I was on the north side of Poseyville, I spotted a railroad abandonment that had a North-South orientation. That is when I realized the town had two abandoned railroads.

Looking "Northish"

Looking "Southish" from same location

When I saw this, I went back into town and explored this route. I determined that the above street crossing is the only one that has had the rails removed. Even the main street through town still has rails. And I wonder if that old wood building used to be the freight house. I found an old grain elevator along the former C&EI tracks. I took a lot of pictures of it because it had so much "character." I figured it was abandoned a long time ago because it did not have room to expand with steel bins and the town had another elevator. But then I noticed that trucks were servicing the elevator. Note that the closest concrete silo is bigger than the other two.

The above view is from the Southwest. The view to the right is a complementary view from the Northeast. I took the view below to document that they tore up the tracks, but they did not bother to remove the No Trespassing signs.

But now I noticed that there is an elevator leg in the background so I digitally zoomed in on the background. Were there three elevators in this town or is it an expansion of this elevator? On the other side of the road from the above No Trespassing sign had cable markers.
My first thought was that someone didn't bother to remove these signs as well. Then it occurred to me that the town may not have microwave or fiber optic access. If they are still connected to the outside world with coax cable, I wonder how slow their internet access is. So the C&EI right-of-way may still be used, just not by a railroad.

I continued to work my way south through town until I found the old interconnect track that became a branch lead when the C&EI was abandoned to the south a lot earlier. Below is a view from the same spot looking North instead of a little South of East. Note that they didn't bother to pick up the ties when they did the first phase of abandonment. And south of where I'm standing the track elevation has been completely removed to make the drainage ditch that you see in the view to the West below-right. The former-IC tracks would have been on the other side of the trees on the left and the "brown line" that is this side of the trees in the middle.

It is worth noting that the farm north of Poseyville just across the road from the John Deere dealer had a grain elevator almost as big as the commercial elevators in town. Below are views of the south and north sides.

And later I spotted two farm storage units in the same view. So farmers, as well as, the commercial elevators, now have to truck grain a considerable distance. Or maybe the farmers were already trucking to bigger grain elevators further away. I did not see any evidence of growing live stock. So all of the grain would have to be hauled to market.

On the right is the farm on the right side of the above picture at camera resolution. I'm going to have to rethink setting the camera to ISO 400 instead of ISO 100 because this picture seems rather "grainy."

Poseyville: CaseIH/Versatile Dealer

Update: from the I-64  exit ramp.

On the north side of the I-64 interstate exit for Poseyville is a CaseIH and Versatile dealer.

20141108 0213c

As is rather typical of dealers, the front part had the tractors and combines. In this case, he had three rows of equipment.

You can't see it in the photo, but the three Magnum 380 tractors in the middle of the middle row each had a little "sold" sign in the window. When I found a worker, I asked if the same farmer had bought all three. He had. They are the top of the Magnum line and can top out at 435 horsepower. It has a continuously variable transmission and a computer allows the farmer to set a speed so that the computer can determine the RPM for the best fuel efficiency.

Up near the road is a Farmall 460.
































And out back they had a Turbo 1066. This was probably a farmer's tractor in for repairs.

Equipment I haven't seen yet at CaseIH dealers is a track combine and sprayers.














These two quad-trak tractors caught my attention because of the significantly different widths of the tracks. The worker said it was because the skinny one (Steiger 370) was for row crop work and the wider one (Steiger 500) was for tillage work. I noticed that the row-crop model also had a 3-point hitch. Both of these tractors were marked as sold, and the worker spent quite a bit of time out in the lot checking things. He was about 6-feet tall.












The lot also had an old 9170 articulated tractor. Even the newer model, 450, is probably "pre-owned" because its exhaust system is not near as elaborate as the current models.

To the right is the exhaust system of the above Model 500 quad-track tractor. The worker that was out in the lot mentioned that the fluid injector cost about $2000 and that the engine is built by Iveco in Germany because Cummins could not beet the emission requirements. He raised the hood of the 500. He may have done it for my benefit because I did not see him check anything on the engine. Nonetheless, I took advantage of the hood being up.

I took a picture of the articulation joint because it is much more complicated than what I have seen in previous models. The top of the Steiger line-up is 620, and it can top out at 682hp with bulge and Power Boost.

The back lot had three long rows of planters, tillage equipment, sprayers, and combine headers. But nothing was unique to this dealer except the Turbo 1066 that I have already included above with the Farmall 460 photos. I will observe that they had over a half-dozen corn heads in inventory, and most of them were 12 rows instead of 8 rows.








I am including a couple of pictures of a seed drill because I plan to use them when I write about the history of planters.