Facility Feature
Modernized Rail Loading

Until recently, the Legacy Grain Cooperative headquarters elevator in Stonington, IL sent almost all of its corn and soybeans 20 miles up a Norfolk Southern Railroad main line to the big processors in Decatur, IL.

That’s still an important destination for the cooperative’s grains. But the addition of a radically new rail loading system at the facility at State Highway 48 and Third Street has opened a potential variety of markets for Legacy Grain.

The coop was loading up to about six railcars at a time on a siding next to the concrete elevator through sidedraw spouts. Origin weights were not possible, says General Manager Kevin Walker, who came to Legacy Grain 12 years ago from a Heritage Grain Cooperative elevator in Bethany, IL.

Starting in February, the coop began construction on a new $6.3 million rail loadout system that includes a mile of new track and a relatively compact railcar loading station that includes a 60,000-bph bulk weigh loadout scale.

“This will allow us to load 100-car trains on the Norfolk Southern,” Walker says. “We’ll be able to ship directly to livestock feeders in the southeast and possibly to the Gulf for export.”

Illinois exports roughly half of the corn grown in the state, but for individual shippers, that requires the capability to reach the export terminals.

Project Gets Underway

To build the loadout system, Legacy Grain hired Grain Flo, Inc., Heyworth, IL (800-842-4875) as a contractor and millwright. “Grain Flo has the experience for this type of project,” Walker comments. Supply chain problems related to COVID-19 added about seven months to the length of the project.

For the track portion of the work, the coop hired TNT Railroad Contractors, Dalton City, IL (217-874-8751).

With the elevator’s location in the center of Stonington, there was no room for a conventional ladder-type railyard much less a loop track. Instead, Design Nine designed and TNT built a single mile-long siding track parallel to the Norfolk Southern main line, half a mile in each direction from the elevator. That’s long enough to handle a unit train from either direction. The track was constructed with 110-pound heavy-duty rail to handle high-capacity covered hopper cars.

As of late June 2022, Legacy Grain had used the setup to begin loading single railcars using the coop’s two Trackmobile railcar movers. No full-size unit trains were expected before harvest due to a severe inverse in the market. “We just don’t have the grain to ship right now,” Walker says.

System Components

Loading individual railcars provided Legacy Grain with a chance to test out the loading system Grain Flo had constructed. Step by step, here is what the contractor did:

• An old open belt conveyor in the elevator’s below-ground tunnel was replaced with a InterSystems 60,000-bph enclosed belt conveyor. Walker says the new conveyor is a much cleaner-operating device, an important consideration both for safety and for operating at an in-town location.

• The conveyor feeds grain to a GSI 60,000-bph loadout leg. The leg is equipped with three rows of Maxi-Lift 20x8 CC-Max buckets mounted on a 64-inch Continental belt. Grain Flo fabricated tower support elements for the leg and for other loadout system equipment at the northeast end of the elevator.

• At the top of the leg, a two-way valve allows the operator to send grain either directly into the upper garner of the bulk weigher or through an Innovative Ag Products 50,000-bph gravity screener mounted above the bulkweigher.

• Whether run through the cleaner or not, grain ends up in a CompuWeigh 60,000-bph bulk weigh loadout scale. The scale, which is equipped with a GSI sampler, is under the control of a CompuWeigh CD-4000/GMS-4000 bulk weigh control system and can render origin weights. The sampler delivers samples to a FGIS-designated official weighing and grading crew for origin grades.

• The control system includes a CompuWeigh SmartLoad module for automatic filling of the weigh hopper between railcars and Super SmartLoad for automatic filling of the lower garner between cars. The bulkweigher also includes a CompuWeigh SmartRead IV railcar scanner set up for dual-direction railcar reading and a 10-foot upper garner extension to hold more grain. The entire setup means the operator never needs to stop loading except for switching nine-car strings of railcars.

• Overflow grain can be routed to a 16,000-bushel overflow bin inside the elevator slip to wait for enough space in the upper garner.

• Railcars are loaded through a spout capable of moving up and down or side to side. Workers atop railcars are protected by an existing fall protection unit, constructed previously by Grain Flo, running the length of the elevator.

• Screenings from the cleaner are sent to a pair of Schuld Bushnell 8,000-bushel steel screenings tanks. From there, screenings can be sent back into the product flow for rescreening or loaded onto trucks and hauled to end users.

Walker says that once the elevator actually begins loading unit trains, it should take 10 to 12 hours to load 100 cars and get faster from there as workers become more familiar with the system.

Ed Zdrojewski, editor

From July/August 2022 Grain Journal Issue

Legacy Grain Cooperative

Stonington, IL • 217-325-3211

Founded: 1935

Storage capacity: 17 million bushels at four locations

Annual volume: 19 million bushels

Annual revenues: $155 million

Number of members: 1,400

Number of employees: 32

Crops handled: Corn, soybeans, soft red winter wheat

Services: Grain handling and merchandising, trucking, risk management

Key personnel at Stonington:

Kevin Walker, general manager

Mike Snyder, assistant manager

Ryan Bell, operations manager

Steven Shanks, outside superintendent

Kyle Smith, operations

Erin Wahl, operations

Stonington Supplier List

Bucket elevator • GSI

Bulk weigh scale • CompuWeigh Corp.

Catwalk • Grain Flo, Inc.

Cleaner • Innovative Ag Products

Concrete • Wagenbach Builders, Inc.

Contractor • Grain Flo, Inc.

Control system • Atchison Electric

Conveyors • GSI

Dust collection • Schenck Process

Electrical contractor • Atchison Electric

Elevator buckets • Maxi-Lift Inc.

Engineering • SKS Engineers, LLC

Fall protection • in-house

Level indicators • VEGA Americas, Inc.

Millwright • Grain Flo Inc.

Motors • Siemens Allis

Rail construction • TNT Railroad Contractors

Rail engineers • Design Nine

Sampler • GSI

Speed reducers • Dodge Industrial, Inc.

Steel storage • Schuld Bushnell

Steel tank erection • Grain Flo, Inc.

Tower support system • Grain Flo, Inc.