Grain Elevators -- Gilman, IL

Gilman, IL has two grain elevators. On the north side is a Co-op grain elevator.

You can see the growth of this elevator is typical. The white building would have been built before WWII. Then they added a couple of cement silos before they switched to steel bins. I was focused on getting a picture of the train depot in Gilman, so I forgot to go to get a picture of the other side of the elevator. I assume the grain dryer is on the other side at the base of the leg. (Update: I did get more pictures. But I see that I need to get a picture between the bins of the leg/unloading area.)




On the south side of town is a Cargill grain elevator that has a capacity of 8.5 million bushels. Below is an overview from the northeast side.  The scale house is on the left. The original head house and concrete bins are in the middle. I'm guessing that it then expanded with the two steel bins to the north, then the couple of concrete towers to the south, and then the big steel bin further to the south. They also have gone through a couple of generations of tower dryers. And a couple of generations of unloading pits.

20141013 0219c

From the southeast side we have a closeup view of the operational center of the elevator. When I got this close, the operator that I had talked to hollered at me and said I can't go further because it is a hard-hat area. So I could not get a picture of a truck that was in Pit A dumping its load.

And turning to my left to look straight west between the north and south parts of the complex we see the CN/IC tracks and the yellow fall protector. You can also see the end of the white building they built across the tracks as their most recent expansion. I got the impression that building more than doubled their capacity. It is so big it is hard to get a picture of it. Going south along the tracks, I found a parking lot from which I took this picture. Note that the building has 6 roof vents.

Judging from the number of roof vents visible below, this view from the south at the US-24 crossing shows less than half of the "white building."

A close up of the scale area includes the probe used to get a grain sample. The is one scale for weighing incoming trucks and two scales for weighing empty trucks that are leaving. Having two exist scales ensures that there is not a backlog of trucks trying to leave the elevator even if trucks from different pits finish at the same time.

I started taking pictures from the south side. Rather soon after a truck entered Pit A, I went back to a parking lot north of the elevator to get pictures from the north side including 0219c above.

This is the first picture I took when I got out of the car. Note that by the time I drove around to the north side, the truck was done emptying and leaving the pit. Since they can empty both hoppers at the same time, it takes just a minute or so to unload a truck. And they have 3 pits. Although the other two pits may be able to empty just one hopper at a time.

Since it was a rainy period when I took this trip down US-45, the Ashkum, Danforth  and above coop elevators had no business that day. But the manager of the Ashkum elevator predicted that the Cargill elevator would have bussines because farmers would be taking advantage of the off day to empty grain from their bins to sell to Cargill. And he was right. Fortunately, I arrived when I did because the truck in the picture was the last truck before they closed for the day.

Digitally zooming in to the cab of a picture of a truck that was leaving soon after I arrived on the south side of the elevator confirms the truck is from a farm. And when I examined the other truck pictured above on the incoming scale, it was also from Carley Farms. So that must be a big farm to have at least two trucks. I include a satellite image below because it caught a tractor with a corn planter in the lower right corner. I count 24 rows on the planter. And the tractor seems to be "bent", so it is a big articulated tractor. The grain storage facilities do meet my expectations of being big. It looks like they have tower grain dryers. I would guess their storage capacity is comparable to the Danforth elevator. I tried Bing's Birds-Eye-View to try to determine the height of the bins, but it was not a very good image. Then I noticed that the shadows of the bins are significantly longer than those of the buildings, so they appear to be 3 or 4 stories tall. Even with all that storage, it is evidently not enough to hold their harvest since we saw them selling grain during harvest season when the price for corn would be at its lowest.

Satellite

Satellite

And the planter is not only wider than one lane, it is wider than the whole road, by a significant margin. A posting on corn planters is on my todo list, but here are some sneak peaks as to how the planters can be folded for transport down the road. The John Deere planters fold the sides forward.



 And CaseIH has that model plus one where the whole planter row is raised and turned 90 degrees.

I could not find a link for the Cargill quotes, so I copied the following from Cargill's web page after searching for Gilman on Oct. 24, 2014. Remember that this year is predicted to be a second bumper crop in a row and that there will not be enough storage capacity to hold all of the corn harvested this year. So I would expect these prices to be lower than they were in 2012 when we had a drought.

Soft Red Winter Wheat
	Spot Price			New Crop
	5.0525	-0.3000		5.4800	-0.1500
	Quote	Basis		Quote	Basis
Yellow Corn
	Spot Price			New Crop
	3.3075	-0.3300		3.3075	-0.3300
	Quote	Basis		Quote	Basis
Yellow Soybeans
	Spot Price			New Crop
	9.7475	-0.2600		9.7475	-0.2600
	Quote	Basis		Quote	Basis

Update:
I noticed that a street view dot showed up on the elevator's property. So I checked it out. I'm sure this is why the street viewer driver went on private property. Normally this rebuilt Alco switcher is behind the elevator, and you can't get a good view of it.

Street View
[Jim Arvites posted a photo of this locomotive.]

Michael Matalis posted the comment: "According to today's Trains Newswire, the Alco S4 that has long been a fixture at the Cargill elevator in Gilman has arrived at its new home at the Arizona State Railroad Museum."

Ed cooper commented on Michael's posting
June 2003.
John Eagan Perhaps paint it back to Santa Fe zebra as delivered?

RYPN
Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Alco S4 No. 1528
[I'm glad to see this was preserved. If I trip across the photos I took of it, I'll of course add them here.]

Nick Hart posted
An Illinois Central deathstar SD40-3 is in charge of 106 grain empties, as the crew shoves east down the Gilman Sub to the Cargill plant for loading. G899 was the symbol on this one. Certainly not what I expected to be shooting this morning, but 2019 has been full of surprises so far.
Thanks to Joseph Kelly Thompson for the heads up.
Gilman, IL  03-31-19
Joseph Kelly Thompson Glad to see you guys got it, I was on a lunch date or else I would’ve joined you guys!
Nick Hart Thanks man. Yeah, we got to town as he was making the move from the Chicago to the Gilman Sub. Part of me thought they'd head all the way to Gibson City.
Nick Hart After dropping the train off at the Cargill plant, they wyed the light unit and headed back south to Champaign. Recently, I think it was assigned around Centralia.
[Looking at satellite images, Cargill's sidings have a turnout on just he north side. That explains why they had to use the Gilman sub to turn the train around. The comments confirm that the photo was taken from I-57.
Street View]

River Rail Photo posted

Cargill Camouflage. The

Cargill

grain elevators in Gilman, Illinois are served by a very distinctive switcher, CLCX 9698, Alco 2SM. Chattahoochee Locomotive Company rebuilt this Houston Belt and Terminal Railway #18 Alco S2 (8/1948) with a Caterpillar engine, improved lighting, and a number of other mechanical alterations, but the exterior would never be mistaken for anything other than an American Locomotive Works product. On the evening of Tuesday, February 2, 2021, sunset and snow complement the Cargill corporate colors as it sits awaiting the next day's work.

Full resolution and store:

https://www.riverrailphoto.com/p269096407/e88104f3f

James McKenzie: Fantastic photo. CLCX is Cargill? Great as we have a number of grain trains through the hump.