Export Wheat Terminal GAVILON TAPS MONTANA’S RICHEST WHEAT-GROWING COUNTRY Chester MONTANA Gavilon Grain, LLC Omaha, NE • 402-889-4000 Founded: 2008 Storage capacity: 320 million bushels at 145 locations Number of employees: 2,000 Crops handled: Wheat, corn, soybeans, specialty grains Services: Grain origination, storage and handling, transportation and logistics, merchandising and distribution, risk management Key personnel at Chester: • Monte Fauque, location manager • Roger Czech, superintendent • Rachelle Fenger, office coordinator Gavilon Grain, LLC’s newest rail-loading terminal near Chester, MT features 1 million bushels of upright storage and 110-car shuttle train loading capability using oneWeigh technology. Photos by Bruce Selyem. Supplier List Aeration fans..............AIRLANCO Bin sweeps ..... Brock Grain Systems Bucket elevators .......... Intersystems Bulk weigh scale .......Meier Sales & Engineering Inc./C&A Scales Bulkweigher controls ......... Cultura Technologies Inc. Contractor... Vigen Construction Inc. Control systems ......NCH Controls Conveyors (belt)...............Hi Roller Conveyors Conveyors (drag) ........ Intersystems Distributor..................Schlagel Inc. Dust collection .. MAC Process Inc. Electrical contractor.......... Advance Electric Elevator buckets ...... Maxi-Lift Inc. Engineering ................... VAA LLC Manlift .....Schumacher Elevator Co. Millwright....Vigen Construction Inc. Roof system ......Kooiker Roofing & Insulation Sampler....................... Intersystems Tower support system ...........Vigen Construction Inc. Truck probe ................ Intersystems Truck scales........... Fairbanks Scales 58 GJ J/A Rooftop equipment includes the head section of two 38,000-bph Intersystems legs, a six-hole Schlagel programmable rotary distributor, and 38,000-bph Intersystems drag conveyors. selected Vigen Construction Inc., East Grand Forks, MN (218-773-1159). Vigen has been a frequent partner of Gavilon, and recently has built new elevators in North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Other major partners on the project are VAA, LLC, Plymouth, MN (888583-4381), structural engineering; Advance Electric, Lewistown, MT (406-538-6767), electrical design and installation; RT Logging & Excavation, Lewistown (406-538-7585), excava- tion; and NCH Controls, Billings, MT (406-534-1032), control systems. Construction began in April 2011, and the facility loaded its first train in January 2012. Concrete Structure The main concrete structure consists of six large tanks plus three interstices, one of which houses the bulk weigh loadout scale and protects it from the elements. The big tanks stand 48 feet in diameter and 120 feet tall holding 173,000 Monte Fauque, location manager T he fertile plains in the north central part of Montana, just east of the Rockies and south of the Canadian border, is often called the Hi-Line. It refers to the main line of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) railroad, originally the Great Northern Railway, the northernmost line of the 19th century transcontinental railroads. The Hi-Line’s major purpose was to carry wheat from Montana back east to the big flour mills around Minneapolis, MN or farther west for export from the Pacific Northwest. That is still its major purpose today and the main reason Gavilon Grain, LLC chose to build a brand new rail terminal elevator on a loop track at Chester, MT (406-7595146). “This area of the Hi-Line doesn’t always get the most rainfall, so the yields aren’t always the best,” says Location Manager Monte Fauque, who came to Gavilon a little over a year ago after managing another elevator at Shelby, MT. “But the quality of the wheat here is very good, and we wanted this type of grain for export at our joint venture terminal in Kalama, WA.” To tap that potential, Gavilon built a new 1-million-bushel slipform concrete elevator outside Chester, with capacity for another 2.6 million bushels in an outdoor pile, and a 8,190-foot loop track siding off of the BNSF. To build the new elevator, Gavilon Response No. 591 J/A GJ 59 A Fairbanks outbound truck scale is equipped with a oneWeigh outdoor ticket printer that keeps the driver in the cab and the truck lines moving. bushels each. They have flat concrete floors, 16-inch Brock sweep augers, and two 50-hp AIRLANCO centrifugal fans per tank generating an estimated 1/5 cfm per bushel of aeration. The two centermost tanks have sidedraw spouts. Incoming trucks carry grain to a 120foot Fairbanks inbound scale and an Intersystems truck probe for sampling. Then, a oneWeigh scale automation system from Cultura Technologies directs the trucker to one of two mechanical receiving pits holding 400 and 850 bushels, respectively. After depositing grain, trucks proceed to an outbound Fairbanks scale and pick up their scale tickets from an outdoor printer. The pits feed a pair of 38,000-bph Intersystems legs outfitted with two rows of Maxi-Lift 20x8 Tiger-Tuff buckets mounted on a 43.5-inch Conti-Tech belt. Response No. 601 60 GJ J/A The legs deposit grain into a sixhole Schlagel rotary double distributor, which can send it out to the storage tanks via 38,000-bph Intersystems drag conveyors or direct to loadout. The storage tanks empty onto a set of 38,000-bph Hi Roller enclosed belt conveyors in a below-ground tunnel. These belts return grain to the legs. Rail loading is accomplished with a 90,000-bph bulk weigh loadout scale from C&A Scales, with a Cultura Technologies oneWeigh control system. Maier Sales & Engineering supplied all other components of the loadout system such as load cells and limit switches. The system includes railcar tag reading capability, which sends railcar capacity information into the control system. “With oneWeigh, operation is as simple as pushing a start button on each car,” Fauque comments. “We have loaded 110-car trains in less than six hours.” Workers atop railcars are protected by a trolley system from Fall Protection Systems running the length of 14 cars. Ed Zdrojewski, editor
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