Once while I was driving to Milwaukee from Iowa to visit my parents, I
saw a very interesting sight along the former MILW (then operated by
the Wisconsin & Southern).
The WSOR had spotted about three very worn covered hoppers along
a siding I could see from the highway. The siding adjoined a farm
field and a dirt parking area (just a flat stretch of field). There was a
grain auger there, positioned with its outlet over one of the hopper
cars. I believe there was a grain truck parked there as well, but I can’t
remember for sure.
Could this have been some type of private grain-loading facility where
maybe a few farms had co-oped together to ship their grain without
having to take it to an elevator? I’m wondering if other members of the
forum have seen this sort of operation and if it’s relatively common.
This would make a great scene for a model railroad (I have plenty of
covered hoppers on my system and something like this would be
perfect).
Fairly common at designated team tracks. If WSOR did this at some place other than a designated team track and there is no lease site contract in place between the grain elevator and WSOR, I hope WSOR operating people understand the Elkins Act and the potential trouble they could be in. (by law, railroads cannot play favorites with individual shippers w/o granting the same benefit(s) to anyone else)
The Elkins Act issue could be quickley solved with a standard track lease. Since Staggers there are many ways to avoid an Elkins Act violation. In addition the STB does zero enforcement in this area.
Don’t disagree (plus it is much watered down in its current format), but it is frightening to see how many operating supervisors from trainmaster on up are clueless about what it is and what it’s for. Especially with shortlines…just ship those loads w/o regard to the risk of being fined.[^][^][^]
CSX has a very small siding along its Gainesville Midland line here in Georgia that is kins of like a small passing siding. It has room for maybe 10 cars. There is also a dirt road that parallels this portion of track. Their used to also be a sign that said CSX TransFlow. The sign is gone but the operations are still the same.
This particular line serves a number of plastic plants. They get loads of small plastic pellets in covered hoppers. Many of the places have sidings. However, every so often CSX will set off a small group of covered hoppers on this siding and trucks will come hook up and make trips off loading the pellets.
I believe there is another of these somewhere in Augusta. I have also seen small team tracks used to unload lumber at a number of locations.
Yes - the N-scale auger turned-out great (much better than I expected even).
I just picked-up some brass and aluminum micro-stock and detailed it with
some left-over parts from my junk stock, weathered it real good and bingo.
It looks great - an easy way to add another destination for grain cars on the
Wisconsin & Iowa!