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Farm World newspaper is reporting construction will begin soon at Evart. How close is the nearest railroad?

The nearest rail line is about 34 miles from the mine, whether you go from Clare or Baldwin.

Steve B wrote:The nearest rail line is about 34 miles from the mine, whether you go from Clare or Baldwin.

Cadillac is about 34 miles as well. McBain is 22 miles. Marion is 20.

In the very remote chance that rail is relaid, I figure it's more likely it would be done on an existing grade, even if the route's longer, instead of from somewhere where all the land would have to be assembled from scratch.

Yes. Building on the former Pere Marquette ROW would be the only cost effective option. I foresee potash trucked to any of the afore mentioned sites for trans loading.

Mosaic is currently producing potash (and salt) at the existing mine. They are not transloading. It's also interesting to note Mosaic did not renew the mineral rights to the land the new company has leased the rights to.

If you could haul two or three different 100 car unit trains out of there every week, then it might be worth putting the rails back in. What would be the most that would come from here? I'm guessing it wouldn't fill but more than two dozen hoppers a week, which is almost what it would take to worry about a transload site. Once you've loaded it onto a truck, where is it going? Let us assume a best case scenario, where either the GLC or MQT hauled from either Clare or Baldwin, down to their respective interchanges with CSX, and then CSX delivered it without handing it off to a third carrier. CSX would need a 300 to 400 mile haul out of it to make it worth their while, and be cheaper than door to door with a truck.

trainjunkie47 wrote:If you could haul two or three different 100 car unit trains out of there every week, then it might be worth putting the rails back in.

That is definitely not in the cards, per previous discussions.

Now when this all first came about MQT loaded a potash unit train for New Orleans out of the coal tower at Baldwin IIRC. Exported somewhere and that was the one and only time it happened.

In 1997 potash was loaded from a newly built transload tower in Cadillac on TSBY. It was short lived and didn't amount to many carloads. The transload tower is still there currently owned by MAC who loads a few carloads of corn during the harvest season.

The Elk has been tied down in Plainwell pointing south all weekend (at least it was judging by the HOT data bursts). I drove by about 5:30 and there are several, by which I mean 6 to 8 or so POTX and MOCX hoppers. Exact count not certain because I didn't want to walk back to the ROW and there were some trees blocking the view. I didn't think to get any car numbers for someone to look up the destination.

From the other board: https://members4.boardhost.com/OtherMic ... 73098.html

If someone wants to post our thread over there they might appreciate the additional information

It would be nice to see a rail transload operation from this. But I don't know if it's worth the almost 2 million gallons of groundwater daily that would be pumped, brine injected into the potash and then thrown down disposal wells. That's almost five times what Nestle helps itself to only a few miles away.

Steve B wrote: ↑

Wed Sep 08, 2021 8:53 pm

It would be nice to see a rail transload operation from this.

GLC has a transload in Cadillac set up for exactly this operation

Raildudes dad wrote: ↑

Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:47 pm

Mosaic is currently producing potash (and salt) at the existing mine. They are not transloading. It's also interesting to note Mosaic did not renew the mineral rights to the land the new company has leased the rights to.

Mosaic sold to Cargill and they only are producing salt. The new company is going up against the big boys (and girls). Let me tell you sometime how that can work out.