TOLUCA, Ill. — Many hundreds of railroad freight grain cars will carry Cargill grain after the $6.4 million loop shuttle construction project is completed at the Toluca Cargill Grain Elevator in the spring of 2013.

Designed to accommodate 110-car unit grain trains, the loop is being built around the perimeter of 200 acres at the Toluca site. Earth-moving at the site began last month, with construction expected to be completed in April 2013.

“We’re building this 100-car loop track to allow us to load directly on the CSX rail line,” Todd Wiessing, Cargill’s project leader, said last week. “The loop is a continuous circle. It’s probably technically 110 cars and three locomotives, with the hours of operation depending on the market.

“This can change at different times of the year, depending on what market, because we still have the ability to load on the Canadian National rail line. So depending on what market is there, we’d be loading at any different time.”

The loop allows the Toluca elevator to load grain directly onto CSX. For Cargill, it’s a different market, one that allows the company to hit the Southeast. That market, which consists of coastal states such as the Carolinas, is basically a domestic market. Much of the nation’s hogs and poultry are raised in that area.

Cargill can cater to the Southeastern market today, but with difficulty. To do so, the elevator has to load grain for shipment on the Canadian National railroad, then switch the grain over to the CSX in small car lots. “This is a lot more efficient for us,” Wiessing said of the loop track.

The loop is being built on ground Cargill had previously purchased. The company will basically continue to farm what’s left of the acreage when the track is finished. The track itself does not have a big footprint. Everything else inside and outside the loop will remain farmable.

“To our local farmers, this (loop track) is a good thing because it gives them direct access to a different market and that competition, in theory, provides a better market for them and allows us to pay them more for the grain, hopefully. From a (Illinois) standpoint, I think it’s always good to support our local agriculture as well as construction jobs and that type of thing,” he noted.

“Technically, we’re not adding more storage capacity, so our storage space doesn’t change and we really don’t anticipate a lot more volume because of this loop track. But, it does give us a different market and allows us to pay the best prices that we can for grain.”

The Toluca community is rather unique in that CSX, Union Pacific and CN rail lines all intersect there. Wiessing indicated the town was fortunate in having three Class 1 railroads. The CSX rail line is fairly adjacent to the Cargill property on the north. He said there is no spur rail line to the elevator, and the loop line will tie directly into the CSX. The loop runs parallel to the CSX track for several hundred yards.

The elevator already is served by CN and Union Pacific. In addition to livestock markets, accessing CSX will help expand the market for local farmers’ corn and soybeans to Cargill’s soybean processing plants in the Southeast and the Gulf’s export markets, said Doug Childers, farm service group leader for Cargill AgHorizon’s central Illinois region.

“Our draw area for grain is from the five surrounding counties, which are some of the top producers of corn and soybeans in the country,” he noted.

The Toluca elevator has considered the loop rail line project a long time. The planning and engineering phase has been in the works for 6-8 years. Unit trains are an efficient way to move large volumes of corn and soybeans.

“I think they’ll run 95-car trains,” Wiessing said. “The CSX is going to a 15-hour load requirement. We would be able to load it faster at 8 to 9 hours. We’ll put some grain through in a hurry.”

A railroad car holds between 3,500-4,000 bushels of grain, depending on its type. Translated, this means a 100-car train can hold roughly 400,000 bushels of grain.

Cargill has operated the grain business in Toluca since 1969. The elevator can store 7.5 million bushels, while another 4 million bushels can be stored on temporary ground piles.

A similar loop shuttle was built at Ransom Farmers Elevator, an independent operation in Ransom, Ill., in 2003. The Ransom railroad shuttle loading operation was the first innovative program of its kind in Illinois. At the time, a spokesman for Ransom Farmers – now Access Ag, Inc. – said the program was so efficient the elevator could load a 110-car train with 434,000 bushels of locally-grown grain within a 15-hour span.

Wiessing said he is familiar with the loop constructed at the Ransom elevator, and has visited the location. “It’s really interesting (to see a loop built),” he said. “All the dirt-moving that goes into it is really impressive to me.”