Indianapolis, IN: Bunge/Central Soya and Cargill/Illinois Cereal Grain Plant Elevators

Bunge: (3D Satellite)

Cargill: (3D Satellite)

While researching the CSX/Indianapolis Union (IU) Bridge, I noticed that the 2005 SPV Map marked the locations of Illinois Cereal and Central Soya along the IU route. My Dad was the tax accountant for Central Soya, and I remember him having to make trips to the 18th Street Plant in Indianapolis for tax assessments back in the 1960s. Now I know where he was going.

As with most big corporation web sites, I could not find any location specific information for Bunge nor Cargill.

Bunge/Central Soy

Street View

When Central Soya owned it, it would have been a soybean oil processing plant. Now it looks like just a grain storage facility. And it also stores quite a bit of something that is liquid. Would it be storing soybean oil?

Street View

Street View

This is the last Google Earth image that had the buildings for extracting oil from soybeans. The buildings are gone in the next image, Mar 1999.

Google Earth, Mar 1998

And this is what it looked like in 1952.

EarthExplorer: Nov 1, 1952 @ 28,400, AR1WU0000020020

Cargill/Illinois Cereal

Street View, West Side

The Google map label is "Cargill Dry Corn Ingredients." So this Cargill plant is not making corn syrup. The two boxcars in the above street view caught my eye. I was especially intrigued when I saw the Conrail logo. That means they are old. I used the timeline feature of street view to determine if the old boxcars were just used for storage. Normally, storage cars just set on a siding. But these Conrail cars show up in different positions. But they appear to be the same two cars each time. My current guess as to their function is that hopper cars have to be shoved deep inside a building and they use these boxcars as buffers to keep the locomotive exhaust outside of the building.

Street View, Jun 2019

 

Street View, Jul 2007

I included their switcher on the right side of this view.

Street View, Jul 2009

Street View, Jul 2011

Street View, May 2014
I think the boxcar on the right is 270490. And the views in the 2011 and 2019 are consistent with that number.
Note that the boxcar on the left still doesn't have graffiti. It does have graffiti in the 2019 view.

In the 2014 view, the four bays of the covered hopper caught my eye. Grain hoppers typically only have three bays. So I looked closer at the hopper cars. The four hopper cars in 2011 have five bays. But the six hoppers I can see in 2016 have just three bays. So are they receiving corn in 2016 but shipping product such as corn meal in the other views? 

Street View, East Side

There is a hopper car in the right rail dock.

Street View

Street View

This is what it looked like in 1952.

EarthExplorer: Nov 1, 1952 @ 28,400, AR1WU0000020020