From west to east:
Ethanol: (Satellite)
Unity Seed: (Satellite)
Valley Grain Milling (old): (Satellite)
ADM: (Satellite)East of town (old): (Satellite)
RRVW = Red River Valley & Western Railroad, see below
Fortunately for me, there are no trees in this area so I could find street views even if they are at a distance.
Ethanol:
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| Street View, Aug 2021 |
Unity Seed:
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| Street View, Aug 2021 |
Valley Grain Milling:
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| Street View, Jul 2019 |
Bonus: While looking for the above view, I happened to notice this view to the east. I'll bet there used to be an interurban railroad here.
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| Street View, Jul 2019 |
Looking West: Note the power pole line. This is probably another example of a power company buying the right-of-way of a bankrupt interurban railroad. The top wires on those poles would have been the state of the art voltage back then.
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| Street View, Jul 2019 |
ADM: even the ADM plant has some character in this town.
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| Street View, Jun 2021 |
East of town:
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| Street View, Jun 2021 |
South of town: This is a grain elevator, fertilizer and sprayer fluids (herbicide, pesticide and/or fungicide) service center. And maybe it is a feed mill.
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| Street View, Aug 2021 |
In one of the street views of the above Maple River Grain & Agronomy, I noticed some more bins in the background. That is how I found this image. Note the two locomotives on the left side.
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| Satellite |
And I spotted a seed farm:
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| Street View, Aug 2021 |
And the town has an exit off I-94 and an airport.
Given the air-flow truck trailer in the driveway, it looks like this mill still operates. In fact, it mills barley for pet food and feed industries. [ValleyGrainMilling] That niche market explains why such a small mill is still viable.
They also make pea flour and lentil flour as well as barley flour. [VGM-ingredients]
The ADM facility must also make flour. In this case, it would be wheat flour. That would explain why it has some big buildings and handles carloads rather than unit trains. A satellite image caught five rail cars at the plant, one of which is under a loading facility. I presume they are for shipping flour. But the top of the cars look strange for flour hoppers.
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| Justin D. Doerr, Mar 2013 |
The ADM facility must also make flour. In this case, it would be wheat flour. That would explain why it has some big buildings and handles carloads rather than unit trains. A satellite image caught five rail cars at the plant, one of which is under a loading facility. I presume they are for shipping flour. But the top of the cars look strange for flour hoppers.
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| Satellite |
So I used Street View to get a side view of the rail cars. There weren't any in Aug 2021. But Jul 2019 had these. But 3-bay hoppers are for grain instead of flour.
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| Street View, Jul 2019 |
Aug 2013 caught some ADM hoppers at the grain unloading facility. So it appears that ADM supplies this mill with wheat from some of its other elevators as well as unloading trucks from local farmers.
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| Street View, Aug 2013 |
In Jul 2008, I could not find any hoppers, but I found a boxcar! What would they be sending or receiving in a boxcar? Also, it looks like someone else owned the plant.
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| Street View, Jul 2008 |
Given the hoppers and even a boxcar, it is obvious that this plant is getting carload rail service. Since Class I railroads hate carload service, I investigated weather or not the tracks were owned by BNSF or a shortline railroad. According to a USGS map, the east-west Northern Pacific route is owned by BNSF, but the Great Northern route going south from town is owned by the Red River Valley & Western Railroad. And there is an interchange yard just west of town. So I suspect that RRVW switches the ADM plant for BNSF.
The RRVW has trackage rights on the BNSF, so I think I'm correct that RRWV handles BNSF's switching duties. Some of these routes are former Northern Pacific routes as well as former Great Northern Routes.
RRVW operates 577 route miles that it obtained from Burlington Northern in Jul 1987. It handles about 60,000 carloads per year. It also handles the grain shuttle trains. (So the loop track at the ethanol plant must be serviced by RRWV instead of BNSF.) [BNSF]
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| rrvw |
"The short line currently services more than eighty customers and over thirty grain elevators. Its connections to the outside world currently include BNSF Railway and Canadian Pacific." [american-rails]
I'm used to farming practices in northern Indiana and Illinois where field after field is either corn or soybeans. I'm learning that farming is more diverse around here. We have already read about barley, peas and lentils. Unity Seed indicates that non-GMO soybeans and several varieties of wheat are also grown around here.
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| UnitySeed |
The post that motivated researching Casselton, ND. The name of the grain elevator that is east of town is Dalrymple.
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