Yetter, IA: Broken Concrete Silo and the CN/IC Route West of Chicago

(Satellite)

Normally, I would simply add a photo of a broken grain silo to my concrete vs. steel notes. But looking this town up on the map taught me more about the Illinois Central Railroad. 

Fort Dodge News- Alpha Media posted, cropped

(Alpha Media- Duane Murley/Brooke Bickford)

No one was hurt and structural failure is to blame according to a release from Landus.

This resulted in damage to a concrete grain silo at the facility in Yetter, Iowa this morning. 

As a result of the structural failure to the northwest-facing bin at the Yetter grain elevator, a large portion of the concrete wall fell to the ground while a train was being loaded on site around 4:30 am. No one was injured. There was no fire risk, and no one was hurt.

Crews are on-site now working to clean up fallen debris and anticipate all railway blockages to be cleared by evening.

Bob AmateurArcher Brown: Looks like they left a bunch of rebar out when they poured it !
Dan Wallace: Happens mostly to northward facing silos. When the rebar is exposed due to deterioration of concrete and the freeze/thaw and lack of sunlight to get rid of the moisture it’s rots the rebar just like a car. When you start moving the grain, it puts a lot of stress on the the weak spots and you can get a blow out. Glad no one was hurt.
Ray McCollough shared

A "before" image shows that this is not a small rural elevator.

Street View

In fact, it also uses a long building and a ground pile for storage.

Satellite

As the grain elevator grew, it appears the town shrunk.

Satellite

When I learned that the railroad was CN/IC, I researched how the IC got here. I knew the original charter for the IC was to build up the middle of the state and then West from Freeport to Galena because at that time Galena was considered more important than Chicago because it was a river town and it had lead mines. But Chicago was on the rise so a branch was added to the charter to go to Chicago. Later, IC built a line that connected Chicago to Freeport. Every map I found that shows the Chicago-Freeport route also shows the routes in Iowa, and vice-versa. I also knew that IC owned the bridge that crossed the Mississippi River at Dubuque, IA. That bridge was also used by CB&Q and CGW. But I forgot where the IC went in Iowa.

Dennis DeBruler

Looking at a contemporary map of CN, we are reminded that the ICG abandoned the charter route up the middle of  Illinois. This CN map shows that Yetter was on a route that went down to Council Bluffs and thus the UP in Omaha. The IC also went to Sioux City. I used their capacity map because the weight limit of a route is a good indicator of the perceived importance of that route. We can see that the Iowa routes support the maximum weight of 286k pounds (green). (Purple is 268k and blue is 263k.)

CN

It is nice to see that at least some Class I railroads are still willing to support grain elevators that have just a siding as opposed to a small yard or, better yet, a loop track. Then I noticed that this town seems to have a long siding for CN train meets when I found a local train parked on the siding.

Satellite

And the Landus Cooperative has its own locomotive so that the only thing CN has to do is drop off and pick up a cut of hopper cars. It is interesting that the ballast for the sidings is more fresh than that for the mainline.

Satellite