CHS rail terminal in Mahnomen, MN with new Warrior 60,000-bph loadout leg attached to an 18-foot-x-18-foot-x128-foot Warrior railcar loadout tower at left.
CP Rail runs the same 110-car shuttle trains through the CHS Inc. rail terminal in Mahnomen, MN (218-935-2261) as it does with any U.S. grain shipper. But the terminal’s new $12 million rail loading system, featuring a 128-foot-tall Warrior loadout tower, provides Cadillac treatment while those railcars are there.
The rail loading operation, which also features roughly 13,000 feet of new track, was a three-year project from start to finish, says General Manager James Hardy, who came to Mahnomen in 2017 after working at another CHS elevator in Wolf Point, MT. (The elevator at Mahnomen is CHS-owned and operated, rather than by a CHS-affiliated cooperative.)
Plans for an upgraded rail loading system in northwest Minnesota had been churning at CHS since at least 2014, he says.
“We had been loading split trains, 50 cars here and 50 at Callaway, MN, about 25 miles to the south,” Hardy explains. “CP told us they were discontinuing co-loading operations, and we needed to be loading all 100 cars at one location or risk losing our shuttle rate.
“We looked at expanding rail at both locations and at building a greenfield facility and came to the conclusion that expanding at Mahomen was the best option.”
While groundwork began in 2017, the project wasn’t completed until August 2020, Hardy says, because the area north of town where the expanded railyard was located, had been designated a wetland by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (MDNR).
“There was a lot of rules we had to work out with the MDNR, such as the type of plants that had to be seeded in the wetlands part of the railyard,” he explains. Northern Plains Rail Services, Fordville, ND (855-567-7245), was the rail contractor.
For the project at the 1-million-bushel elevator, CHS hired Vigen Construction Inc., East Grand Forks, MN (218-773-1159), as general contractor and millwright. Warrior Mfg. LLC, Hutchinson, MN (320-587-3470), fabricated the tower and manufactured much of the grain handling equipment included in the project.
“We took bids and awarded the project to Vigen,” says Hardy. “We have a solid relationship with Vigen. Every project has its problems that come up, but they do an excellent problem of troubleshooting problems and fixing them.”
In terms of the 60,000-bph bulk weigh system and the tower that houses it, Hardy has been impressed with its performance so far.
The Warrior tower itself stands 18 feet by 18 feet by 128 feet tall. It is outfitted with a switchback staircase, with multiple service platforms for the maintenance crew to access equipment.
The tower houses all of the equipment related to the bulkweigher plus a grain grading laboratory operated by North Dakota Grain Inspection Service during rail loading.
Grain is delivered to the tower structure from existing steel tanks immediately to the north via a set of above-ground Schlagel 20,000-bph drag conveyors. The drags, in turn, deposit grain into a AGI Hi Roller 60,000-bph enclosed belt conveyor that runs to the tower.
The belt conveyor deposits grain into a Warrior 60,000-bph loadout leg that is supported on the south side of the tower. The leg has a discharge height of 127 feet and is outfitted with three rows of Maxi-Lift TigerTuff CC 20x10 buckets mounted on a 65-inch rubber belt supplied by All State Belting. The leg has a ceramic tile-lined inlet and outlet and an air-operated Magnetic Products plate magnet.
Prior to loadout, the leg deposits grain into a Warrior 40,000-bph gravity screener that has an actuator-operated internal bypass for grain that does not need cleaning prior to loadout.
The Warrior bulkweigher is under the control of a Solentra Global oneWeigh system that includes a trackside reader for railcar-mounted RFID tags that provide maximum and tare weights for each car. The bulkweigher also has a Gamet pelican sampler and a 30-inch angular downspout for loading into railcars.
Hardy notes that it has been taking crews from 10 to 14 hours to load a shuttle train, well within the time limit set by CP Rail. The facility operates two CHS-owned switching locomotives to get the job done.
While Vigen was onsite, CHS had the contractor perform some additional upgrades.
Ed Zdrojewski, editor
Reprinted in November/December 2020 Grain Journal
