Albert City, IA: Grain Elevator and Ethanol Plant

(Satellite)

Jerry Krug posted
Albert City, Iowa on March 18, 2007. That's ex-CNW 4542 at the base.
Jesse T Wells That GP is scrap now. Don’t know if it been cut up yet but it was deadlined for it the last time I was there last spring. 2 Ex-UP MP15’s (they might be SW1500’s) are taking it place. I believe the 2 units serve both that elevator and the ethanol plant.
Marc Mcclure A Tillotson Construction house
Michael R Morris Just a guess, but Albert City could be the smallest town with the greatest storage capacity. I'm thinking of other contenders.
Bob Summers What is it's capacity? My recent post in Frederick Kansas, population 9, is listed at 588,000 bushels - but I am sure with a little research I can beat that.
Michael R Morris Holloway MN, Pop. 92 & apparently massive 'flat' storage. Am I saying that right? Long buildings?
Dennis DeBruler Some towns in Illinois have a high capacity-to-size ratio because the town itself never amounted to much.
Wilton: https://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/.../wilton-il-grain...
Whitaker: https://towns-and-nature.blogspot.com/.../whitaker-

Bob Summers responded to Michael's comment about "massive 'flat' storage in the post
This is what we think of as "massive flat storage" - SW of Wichita near Haysville Kansas.
Dennis DeBruler Bob Summers How do they unload the long buildings? Does a front loader put the grain into trucks that then unload at the regular elevator?
Bob Summers The buildings like these Garvey put up here and at Salina Kansas have a tunnel with conveyor back to the elevator. We used a big hiloader to push grain to the outlets for final cleanout.
Rich Reed If you need massive flat storage then why are so many elevators empty? It cannot be better to store grain flat then in a bin.
Bob Summers These flat storage buildings were initially built for government storage when there were large surpluses post WWII through the '50's. Many are now used for other purposes, example at the old Garvey Grain elevator SW of Wichita several are now serving other uses as Garvey Industrial Park. Terminal elevators that cannot receive grain by truck and load 100+ hopper cars are obsolete and out of business. Elevators in the country mostly now load trucks to move grain to area train loading facilities, unless they are on a short line railroad and they have several elevators that combined can load the 100+ hopper cars for the short line to deliver as a unit train or shuttle to the major railroad. You are correct, Rich Reed, there are problems maintaining quality in flat storage and the covered grain piles that are more common today.

Dennis DeBruler commented on Jerry's post
I didn't understand why you thought this town had a lot of capacity until I discovered that the photo is just a tip of the iceberg.
https://www.google.com/.../data=!3m6!1e1!3m4...
And it appears that they have a lot of fertilizer storage as well.
https://www.google.com/.../@42.7845499,-94.../data=!3m1!1e3

This is rail served by UP using a remnant of the Milwaukee that runs north to Marathon. There it uses a C&NW remnant that joins a M&StL (Minneapolis & St. Louis) remnant at Rolfe. M&StL became part of the C&NW. The M&StL remnant runs from Plover south through Rolfe and joins UP's mainline at Grand Junction.

An ethanol plant helps motivate UP to serve this town.

Valero