Sterling + Lyons, KS: MKC Grain Elevator

(Satellite)

Bob Summers posted three photos with the comment:

Since the railroads decided to let the truckers have the short hauls, more facilities like this branch of the Mid Kansas Co-op located on Kansas Hwy 96 & 14 between Lyons and Sterling, have been built. Note this facility has two high capacity receiving legs, large side draw spouts from the jump form tanks for rapid loading of semis, and provision for piling grain on the ground. The semis wil haul the grain to area train loading elevators to be loaded onto 100+ hopper unit trains - mostly to the port elevators on the Gulf of Mexico.

Bob Summers Here in central Kansas we have a lot of grain production and lots of elevators to handle it, so a number of unit train loading facilities have been built to supplement the terminal elevators in Salina, Hutchinson and Wichita that have the ability to load the unit trains. Also some of the short line railroads, like the K&O, will let a shipper load from several elevators so they can turn a full unit train over to the BNSF or UP where they connect, say in Hutchinson. Our terminals now receive by semi, and ship by rail in this area. Some of the grain from these country elevators will be trucked to area flour mills or ethanol plants, as well as local feeders - but if it goes to the unit train loading facilities it will usually be shipped for export on the gulf or the west coast.

Dennis DeBruler I see there is an ethanol plant just a little further north.
https://www.google.com/.../@38.2852574,-98.../data=!3m1!1e3
I noticed that plant is rail served. So a railroad is close to MKC, they just refused to connect to it. They do have the option of connecting if the railroads learn in time that they can't shrink their way to long-term prosperity and they lower their rates.

Bob Summers Visited with a friend at MKC just this evening. They call this location "Rice County" and have plans to expand next year. Are in negotiations to acquire the land needed to do what you suggest. However they are a partner on the train loading facility I call "Canton-Galva" that I posted a couple of months ago. The bottom line is to make the investment in land, trackage, grain loading equipment necessary to load the 100+ car unit train in 24 hours pay off, they need to be able to do this probably 25 or 30 times per year. They also need to actually own the grain they ship to destination which is over one million dollars in inventory per train load. Takes a lot of volume and deep pockets to do business this way!

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