Wood: (
Satellite)
The railroad was Great Northern and is now BNSF.
I wonder what the brick building was used for. A flour mill?
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Andrew Tuttle posted
Harlem, Mt |
I've never seen a long building filled this way. Normally they have an augur up in the ridge of the roof for the full length of the building.
Obviously, the town gets rail service.
In fact, this elevator owns its own locomotive.
I think the first two words on the locomotive are "Columbia Grain" because I learned that...
...Columbia Grain has a big presence in Montana. I'm used to grain elevators exporting through New Orleans using the Mississippi River. These elevators export using PacifiCorp. Many of their grain elevators are non-shuttle loaders, but Harlem is listed as one of their shuttle loaders. I believe that means that they can load a unit train. That would explain why they own a locomotive.
The rest of the products page describes different types of wheat that they handle. I noticed that beans are low on the list and that corn doesn't even exist. Some types of wheat are grown for Asian customers. Their web site talks about "pulse producers." But I have not been able to figure out what that means.
Their logistics includes containers and cargo ships.
This is an overview of their "elevator row."
I was going to pass on yet another wood grain elevator on Facebook until I zoomed out to get a feel for where this town was in Montana. As I zoomed out, I noticed that the town is in a long, narrow strip of green. I presume the light-brown areas with square corners also produce a crop. Are those wheat fields?
This made me curious about what the land looks like at a comparable scale around where I grew up. At that scale, I can include my Grandfather's farm near Stroh and my hometown of Fort Wayne. As I expected, most of the land contains some green.
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