Rail News Home BNSF Railway January 2017 Rail News: BNSF Railway The storage dome can hold 60,000 metric tons of sugar.Photo – American Crystal Sugar Co. By
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United Sugars Corp. and
American Crystal Sugar Co. in November 2016 unveiled a $44 million bulk sugar storage and transfer facility on
BNSF Railway Co.'s network in Montgomery, Ill. Located 45 miles west of Chicago, the facility is in an ideal spot for reaching United Sugars' large customer base in the Chicagoland and Great Lakes areas, said BNSF Director of Ethanol and Bulk Foods Keeley Motley at the
Midwest Association of Rail Shippers (MARS) winter conference earlier this month.In addition, the site is well situated for sugar shipments arriving from the Red River Valley at the Minnesota-North Dakota border."If you're loading the rail cars in Minnesota and North Dakota, you're already west of Chicago, … so you're not having to go further than necessary," Motley told attendees at the conference, which ran Jan. 11-12 in Oak Brook, Ill. The 20-acre site includes a 26,000-square-foot storage dome, which can hold 60,000 metric tons of sugar. The shipper expects to move almost twice as much sugar to customers each year.BNSF officials anticipate that the facility will lead to a 10 percent reduction in the cycle time for shipping sugar, Motley said.BNSF trains operate the long-haul leg of the journey, while Burlington Junction Railway provides direct service into the facility.Photo – American Crystal Sugar Co.
Before the storage dome was built, the railroad shipped sugar directly to Chicago-area receivers that didn't always have storage space for the product. That meant rail car cars could sit idle waiting to be unloaded.
"Any time that the rail car is sitting at the receiver means that's time it's not back at the plant getting ready for its next load," Motley said.