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W Texas | I have spoken to Union Pacific extensively last year about several properties near me. This is near El Paso, Tx, FWIW.
Anyway, according to them, everything in your post is incorrect (may just be a here vs. there thing.) But local miners out here routinely get in shipments of several cars only, and coops on the western prairie often have 8-10 car shipments. It isn't unusual at all.
Here, they have a "local" train once per week that will pick up or drop off railcars. You can move them yourself if you have the equipment, etc, and have a week to load (I found this part hard to believe, but confirmed with several people including local maintenance boss, local talc miner employees--who move cars with a crawler tractor BTW, and district manager). They have locks on the rails so the cars can't get on the main track, so your moving the cars is of no safety concern to them. There are no requirements for number of loads per trip or per year. They will haul any number of cars, but you get discounts for larger quantities, etc. Some of the charges are the same for one car or several, so 8-10 cars is much more realistic scenario, which would be 30k bushel of grain minimum per shipment, approximately. A plausible scenario would be to have a 40k grain bin built rail side with overhead delivery. Do t need a dump under the siding unless you intend to offload rail cars. Fill your bin and ask for the proper number of cars. Load on your schedule then get it picked up on next local route. BTW, cars are around 63ft and hold from 200,000lb. You need to divide your siding length in feet by 63, then by a factor of 2.1 to determine how many cars it will hold at one time. Your bin would be in the middle of your siding.
My advice to the initial poster is to stop by your local maintenance facility and talk with them. If there are guys hanging out at the shop, it is probably because there is no current project and they can't clock in. They will know who to contact, etc. Some of these guys just hang out and aren't on the clock unless there is a job to do. If they can show you around they get to clock in, so they are eager to please. I think a lot of these rumors about needing a 100 car minimum are promulgated by fertilizer companies and grain companies that are "farming the farmer". In other words, I think it is all BS they use to protect their turf.
And if you don't believe me, trust your own eyes. There are small car drop offs all over the place if you just pay attention. Also, very few side rails are designed to accommodate 110 cars. It would have to be 63 ft X 110 cars X 2.1 = 3 miles long. They basically don't exist except at river and port grain terminals etc.
Edited by jimsonweed 1/3/2016 12:23
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Has contracted directly with a rail buyer?
