Roberts and Ridgefield, IL: Wood Grain Elevators

Roberts: (Satellite)

Ridgefield: (Satellite) Ridgefield is the name Nikki Burgess used for this "town."

These elevators are along a CN/IC route, but neither of them are rail served. I moved Ridgefield to the top because it has a more impressive photo.

Ridgefield

The "grainLocal" label applies to the Roberts elevator, not this one.

Nikki commented on her post
The elevator shot at Ridgefield. I had been dreaming of a morning shot at this elevator for years. Finally happened. I'd have preferred an IC Paducah Geep, right, but it's a black and white engine and it's clean. Beggars can't be choosers. The shot I did before this was at Danforth north of Gilman on the main, and I had to run quick like a bunny to get here in front of him. Luckily both US 45 down there as well as I-57 and IL 54 were all empty on a quiet day in the country and as such amenable to what was a somewhat liberal interpretation of the term "speed limit," which in this case meant "the car won't go any faster."
Dennis DeBruler: Nikki Burgess I looked at four different maps, and they all showed a Ridgefield, IL, that is northwest of Chicago. But your description of the drive from Danforth to here allowed me to find this elevator.
40°42'53.0"N 88°04'02.7"W

Roberts

Nikki Burgess provided this photo as part of a comment concerning NS trackage rights on the IC on a post about Lodge, IL.

I found her post of the photo to a railfan group.
Six years ago today: on 11/5/2014, the early afternoon calm in tiny Roberts, IL on CN's Illinois Central Gilman District is temporarily shattered by the noisy passage of NS 6119 South, a manifest train exercising Norfolk Southern's trackage rights on the "Main Line of Mid-America" between Chicago and its own rails at Gibson City. The 6119 was at the time a recently rebuilt graduate of the NS shops in Altoona, PA and sports a new cab--note the kind of oddball numberboards for an SD40-2. I had quite a day with this train, chasing it from a first shot at Peotone and thence down the main to Gilman, and from the junction there all the way to a final image made at Gibson City. It was a warm, sunny fall day and as such one of the best CN-era chases over the old IC I ever had.

Unfortunately , the street view driver turned left at the corner and never went by the wood elevator.

Street View

The closest view of the wood elevator that I could capture. Note the New Holland tractor pulling a red gravity wagon. And there are a couple of green gravity wagons behind that. That is why a local grain elevator is so important for some farmers. It allows  them to haul their grain to market with the small capital investment of a gravity wagon or two because they already have a tractor.

Street View, Oct 2016