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Years ago BNSF helped pay for two large grain elevators along the former Santa Fe route that had loop tracks so that they could quickly load a unit train. BNSF is just now making this happen with five grain elevators in Washington (source). A problem with big grain elevators is how fast can they unload the farmer's truck or wagon. I see this one has two scales and two unloading bays and not much room to queue up a lot of trucks. So hopefully they don't waste a lot of the farmer's time setting in line. BNSF helped build another big elevator near Toluca, IL.
The spur going north from the west side of the loop goes up to a nuclear power plant. Nuclear power plants don't need the railroad very often, but when they need it, they need it. The railroad is used to haul oversized equipment.
Cerita Sakura posted three photos with the comment:
GRAIN LOADOUT ON BNSFFS Grain facility in Ransom, Illinois on the former Santa Fe Chillicothe Sub. $3 million was invested in 2004 to upgrade facilities in Ransom to load 110-car trains. BNSF offered an incentive to upgrade with higher capacity receiving legs and bulk loadout to the railcars. They added 1.5 miles of railroad track connecting to an existing railroad line. The loop allows 110 cars and an engine to stay intact while being loaded in a 15-hour period. Each trainload holds up to 440,000 bushels of corn - equal to eight river barges.The Ransom FS Grain facility was originally built in 1875 and the Ransom Farmer’s Elevator coop was founded in 1904. This facility was the first railroad grain shuttle loader in Illinois. A balloon track wraps around the site to allow 110 car grain shuttle trains to be efficiently loaded. These trains run between a grain loading origin and an unloading destination.(aerial photos Google Earth)
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| Nick Hart posted
Yesterday's [April 14, 2019, We had the deepest mid-April snowfall since 1961] BNSF M CHIGAL heads west by the Ransom grain elevator with a quad of thundering EMD's, led by a Cascade green GP39-2. Taken on the 106th of January...err, I mean April 14th, 2019.
BNSF Chillicothe Sub
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| Robby Gragg postedOn 4/29/20 BNSF 1614, still wearing Santa Fe blue and yellow leads L-CHI104 east through Ransom, IL. This was the last hoorah for this unit in original paint as weeks later it was sent to Topeka for class overhaul. Sad to see another Santa Fe painted unit bite the dust, but that's why it's important to shoot them while they still exist! Dennis DeBruler This is also a nice view of the conveyors that the grain elevator has across the mainline. Not too many grain elevators operate on both sides of the track. Robby Gragg Yeah, it's certainly a huge elevator complex |
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| Robby Gragg posted A pair of heritage 1 SD40-2s lead today's Local 105 west under the massive grain complex in Ransom, IL. [At first I thought it was the same local that Jay Brown posted. But his local had a second white hopper.] |
(Facebooked)
Mark Kingsbury posted the comment: "I'm looking for a prototype instance where the main line runs between the grain elevator and the loading/ recieving track.and the loading spout reaches over the main."
Bob Summers I have never seen this setup, would be a lot of red tape and permits and liability waters involved to get something like that approved.
Richard Risley Railroads are very restrictive when it comes to their mainline trackage. Bob's correct - it would be a very big & most likely impossible task. Railroad management & the unions would pose formidable challenges.
Brett Ellis Look up FS grain in Ransom, Illinois.
Dennis DeBruler I wouldn't call that a loading spout. I'd call that a conveyor to an expansion. Gillman, IL, also has one over the CN/IC mainline.
Brett Ellis Dennis DeBruler they have the loader on the opposite side of the mainline also.
Dennis DeBruler Brett Ellis Your right. The loading function was moved to the other side of the tracks so that they could load unit trains using a balloon track. Taking another look at the satellite image, they kept the truck unloading facilities on the south side of the track. So the mainline does separate the unloading and loading functions of this elevator.
I understand that Ransom is one of two grain elevators that BNSF helped finance so that the farmers in the area could efficiently ship unit trains. The other was near Toluca, IL. But Toluca is a greenfield elevator and everything is well away from the mainline.
https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m1!1e3!4m5!3m4...
Gillman has just storage on the other side of the mainline.
Since BNSF wanted the balloon track loading, I assume that they helped with the red tape to get the conveyor across the mainline.
In Sept 2020, I got hit with a Double Doomsday. Both Facebook and Google changed their software. I said "changed" instead of "updated" because the new software is not better. In fact, Google's Blogger software is far worse except for a search function that works. For example, it has three bugs concerning photos and their captions. So I'm no longer copying photos and interesting comments from Facebook. I'm just saving the link. Unfortunately, some of the links are to private groups.
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