Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Groveland, KS: Grain Elevator shows a History of Grain Elevators

(Satellite)

The 2005 SPV Map shows that this Rock Island route is now used by both UP and BNSF.

Larry Carver posted
Elevator in Groveland, Kansas, from my drone.
Bob Summers: I really like this shot, Larry Carver. We need to team up on some elevators. The initial concrete part was slipformed by Chalmers and Borton in 1972. This was when they started building elevators without an enclosed concrete headhouse in order to minimize the risk of catastrophic grain dust explosions. Probably within 10 years the two smaller jump form bins were added. The two small galvanized steel corrugated bins appear to be a quick addition to increase capacity for a particularly large harvest. The larger jump form bins were added a couple of decades later after grain could no longer be shipped to terminal elevators for storage pending sale because the railroads phased out the transit provision in their rate structure. The former Rock Island, now Union Pacific, railroad does not handle grain shipped from elevator. Mid Kansas Co-op has a nearby unit or train loading facility capable of loading 110+ hopper cars which is supplied by several of their country elevators in the area.
Dennis DeBruler: When I looked at a satellite image, I noticed that they also have ground storage. And Larry's photo shows that it is used.
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.2938185,-97.7281652,231m/data=!3m1!1e3

It is not noticable in Larry's photo, but this elevator appears to have three generations of jump-form silos. Note on the west side that the two silos on the north side have a bigger radius than the two on the south side.
Satellite

This shows the original slip-from silos on the left and the newer jump-form silos on the right. If you access the link and pan right you can see that they did not have the ground pile in 2007.
Street View, Sep 2007

When I fired up Google Earth to determine when the ground pile was added, I discovered that a second ground pile facility has been built. So this elevator shows two generations of ground piles. The newer ones tend to be ovals instead of circles.
The original pile is missing in a Aug 2011 view, but it is present in the next Nov 2013 view. The second pile is missing in a Jun 2016 view, but it exists in a Jun 2019 view. They were constructing the west silos in Aug 2006 and all four jump-form silos existed in the next view, Jul 2008. 
Google Earth, Dec 2022

But another street view shows the northern two were built after the southern two were built.
Street View, Sep 2007



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