By Ronald Ahrens
In the previous post, I expressed uncertainty on the fate of the curved cupola atop Tillotson’s 208,000-bushel elevator built at Montezuma, Kan. in 1948.
Everything else about the elevator matched a 1954 photo, but the cupola appeared to have been modified since. One might even say mutilated.
The original cupola measured 21.5 feet long, 47.5 feet wide, and 46 feet high. Maybe it wasn’t commodious enough to meet a need for higher capacity.
Two readers responded to the post, offering their explanations about the situation.
Longtime reader Chandler Thomas steps forward with this analysis:
“From the photos provided we can ascertain these things. The concrete headhouse/cupola has been removed and a steel structure installed in its place. Both bucket elevators/“legs” are in place, which can be seen on one of the night photos.”
Chandler Thomas continues:
I designed and constructed several upgrade projects to Tillotson elevators.
Commonly, the first issue was to increase leg capacity. There was ample space in the leg wells to accommodate a higher capacity leg. Doing this normally required removal of the pothole-type distributor and replacing it with a double-rotary distributor as is shown in the photos.
In a few of my projects, the new distributor was larger in diameter than the headhouse width.
I suspect, since this elevator does not show any signs of an explosion, that the headhouse was selectively demolished, a steel structure was constructed in its place to support the new distributor, and legs and the lower portion of the steel structure were enclosed to help keep rain out of the bins from the locations where spouts entered them and from the manholes.
Meanwhile, reader Robert Summers gives a different account:
“Grain dust explosion damage circa 1980 required building a new head house, and by that time OSHA specs encouraged or mandated leg motors and drives not being enclosed to minimize risk of major damage from grain dust explosions.”
We’re grateful to our readers for sharing their expertise