Nice find, Stix
I delivered grain to that Echo elevator many times when working on my Uncle's farm! BTW, are you going to be at the Woodbury Flea Market Saturday? I will be there with Gary Austin(we have a couple of tables).
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
I work for the State of Minnesota (and no it's not cold here anymore, it got up to +7F today) and while searching for something else yesterday at work I came upon a word document called "Grain Elevator Cost Schedule" on a state website. At first glance it looks pretty dull - mainly about calculating taxes on grain elevators - but in fact it has a lot of neat information for anyone modelling a grain elevator, feed mill, or ethanol plant.
It includes color photos of the various types of elevators and mills, most are notated to explain what each building is and what it does. There's explanations of things like how a feed mill processes grain into animal feed too. There's also some railroad information, including a glossary of pertinent railroad and milling terms, a nice "MinnDOT" color railroad map of Minnesota, a listing of the mileage of all railroads serving Minnesota (and links to their websites) and a listing of elevators and which RR serves them.
All in all, this would be a very usefull document for someone modelling any grain-related railroading. You can access it online, and can print it out too.