Ruff Brothers grain terminal 6 miles north of Minonk has begun operations just in time
for the harvest season. As area farmers are busy harvesting their grain, Ruff Brothers are
busy shipping the grain down to Texas on Santa Fe railroad cars. The newly built terminal
has over a mile of railroad track laid in a circle adjacent to the huge grain bins that store
the grain from area fields.
Two or three times a week the Santa Fe railroad pulls in 110 cars from the mainline with 3 engines
and leaves the cars there to be filled by the grain company. Santa Fe engineers who brought the
engines down from Chicago, return to Chicago by car to await the filling of the grain cars. Ruff
Brothers trained 4 of their employees to run the diesel engines to pull the cars past the huge grain
hopper by the grain silos. It takes a whole day to fill the 110 cars with 440,000 bushels of car.
When the cars are filled, the Santa Fe train engineers motor down from Chicago to pull the grain cars
down to Texas where the grain is sold to Texas feedlots and to manufacturers of ethanol gas.
Click here for an earlier story on construction of the grain terminal.
Click here for more pictures of the grain terminal.
A 110 car long train full of grain waits to be taken to Texas.