Export Elevator: (
Satellite)
While studying the
Port Allen Lock, I noticed on the satellite image that there is a huge grain elevator that no longer has any rail service. The yard tracks have been removed. Then I realized that the incoming grain is now from barges and the outgoing grain goes to ocean-going ships. The USACE maintains a 45' shipping channel to Baton Rouge.
They began with four steel bins, rail service and a load-out conveyor to the dock.
By 1960 they went from 4 to 12 wide bins and two rows of tall bins.
The following four Global Earth images show that the 1960 configuration lasted until after Nov 2011. And the configuration we see today was built by Aug 2014. Unfortunately, the resolution of the Global Earth images are not good enough to determine when rail service was removed.
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| Global Earth, Nov 2011 |
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| Global Earth, Jan 2013 |
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| Global Earth, Mar 2013 |
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| Global Earth, Aug 2014 |
In addition to the new configuration replacing rail shipment by barge shipment and replacing a leg by conveyor belts, it includes a couple of six-silo clusters that I have never seen before. On the south side, they replaced three of the wide bins with a row of rather large silos. It looks like all the new silos were built with slip forms rather than jump forms.
Is the "white boom" that is just above where the two conveyor belts cross doing some bank stabilizing work?
At first, I thought the "white boom" was unloading barges. But I see that their unloading dock is covered and the contents of the barges is white and they don't appear to have covers.
This view confirms that I would not be able to get better photos by driving there because I could not get any closer to the elevators that the street view car did.
I don't cross fences, especially if they have barb wire on top.
I tried to get a better view of the barge unloading operation before I realized it was covered. Note that in April, as opposed to the June views, we can see the exhaust stack of a ship that is being loaded.
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