Throughout Saskatchewan and much of Alberta and Manitoba there are these similar looking Grain Elevator buildings every 10km or so. They turned out to be pretty handy emergency recharge stations when I was running low on the battery and still far from a town. But what exactly did they do? I really wanted to know so when I saw this one old one just outside of Indian Head with the ramp open I had to go in for a look:
I was expecting to be shooed out right away, but a very friendly operator inside was equally curious about my presence in there and gave me the full on tour.
So the purpose of the elevator is to be a local depot where farmers can drop off and sell their crop. The various chambers in the building get filled up with different types of grain, and these in turn eventually get dumped into bulk train cars where they are distributed on the international market.
What was amazing about this place was that it was 100% made of wood, had not a single electro-mechanical actuator and was still fully functional and in use, exactly as when it was built some 60-70 years ago. Here are the wooden levers I believe controlling the gates that allow grain to fall from the chute outside into a train car.
When the farmers pull up, they empty their load through a grating on the floor. The grain is measured by weighing the truck before and after it dumps. But there isn't a load cell with a digital scale readout, no the truck is weighed with an old-fashioned double beam balance, linked with great mechanical advantage to the vehicle platform.
View attachment 2
Underneath the grating is a bin which has an elevator of scoops on a conveyer belt, and this lifts the load to the top of the building. Down below in the 'control room' of sorts, there is a huge disk that looks like the wheel of fortune wheel which the operator rotates to select the correct bin that this batch bets dropped into.
Of course, there are a lot of modern concrete and steel Grain Elevators as well, full of electrical actuators and run from a computer console. But I thought it was pretty neat how this one was still in full use with none of that.
I was expecting to be shooed out right away, but a very friendly operator inside was equally curious about my presence in there and gave me the full on tour.
So the purpose of the elevator is to be a local depot where farmers can drop off and sell their crop. The various chambers in the building get filled up with different types of grain, and these in turn eventually get dumped into bulk train cars where they are distributed on the international market.
What was amazing about this place was that it was 100% made of wood, had not a single electro-mechanical actuator and was still fully functional and in use, exactly as when it was built some 60-70 years ago. Here are the wooden levers I believe controlling the gates that allow grain to fall from the chute outside into a train car.
When the farmers pull up, they empty their load through a grating on the floor. The grain is measured by weighing the truck before and after it dumps. But there isn't a load cell with a digital scale readout, no the truck is weighed with an old-fashioned double beam balance, linked with great mechanical advantage to the vehicle platform.
View attachment 2
Underneath the grating is a bin which has an elevator of scoops on a conveyer belt, and this lifts the load to the top of the building. Down below in the 'control room' of sorts, there is a huge disk that looks like the wheel of fortune wheel which the operator rotates to select the correct bin that this batch bets dropped into.
Of course, there are a lot of modern concrete and steel Grain Elevators as well, full of electrical actuators and run from a computer console. But I thought it was pretty neat how this one was still in full use with none of that.
That's awsome!.. you did 15 times more distance than this exotic electric car with one on charge!
