The Giant Elevator: 1943

My dad worked 50 years in the Santa Fe Elevator A in the Argentine rail yards. The elevator had many grain companies lease the facility during the years, with some of the companies as Burris Mills, Continential Grain & the final one was Cargill. My dad was the weighmaster and his floor was 3rd row of windows from the top. I spent many days up there with him looking out over Kansas City.

And this is how it looks today

http://kensas.kdhe.state.ks.us/pls/certop/Iop?id=C410570991

Latitude: 39.0862 Longitude: -94.68742

AT&SF ELEVATOR - 4515 KANSAS AVENUE - KANSAS CITY, KS

"This site is the former location of a large grain elevator located within the Argentine Yard Railroad facility. The elevator was demolished in 1996, the cement foundation covered by approximately 5 feet of rock ballast and overlaid by closely spaced railroad tracks."

This grain elevator is now gone. It was located in the middle of the Santa Fe Railway's large Argentine Yard in Kansas City, KS. When the Santa Fe's corporate successor decided to rebuild and enlarge the Argentine Yard, it was demolished to make room for a larger yard.

I wonder if this is the type of photo that they would have censored in the wartime Soviet Union because it represented almost unthinkable wealth and resources -- just like they censored the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" because of the suggestion that Americans who were wealthy enough to own a truck were still considered to be living in poverty.

Can anyone identify where this is? Grain elevators are hard to demolish, so it is probably still there.

I could almost hear the opening bars of "Oh What a Beautiful Morning."

That's a brakeman signaling the engineer. Used to be called "decorating" as they walked the tops of cars.

Dig the crazy hobo on the boxcar doing I'm a Little Teapot.