A small mechanical curiosity
The Goodrich Elevator
Wagon pulls in. Pull the lever, dump the load. Fire the engine, watch the leg spin and the cups carry grain up into the tower. It's how every elevator worked for a hundred years — including this one.
Hover or tap any part of the elevator to learn what it is.
How a 1919 grain elevator actually worked
A farmer's wagon — or, by 1919, an early Model TT truck — pulled into the drive-through shed and stopped over a steel grate in the floor. The driver opened the bed, and grain poured by gravity through the grate into the boot pit at the base of the tower.
A stationary engine turned the leg — a tall vertical shaft housing a thick rubber belt with metal cups bolted to it. The cups scooped grain out of the boot pit, carried it up to the head house at the very top of the tower, and tipped it onto a spout. Gravity did the rest, sliding the grain into a storage bin. Most country elevators of the era ran on a gas engine; some — judging by the Goodrich's surviving mill machinery, possibly this one — used an electric motor as soon as municipal current was available. The game uses a gas engine because the puffs and four-stroke chug are the more atmospheric choice.
When a buyer came for the grain, the operator pulled a different lever — the bin gate — underneath the bin and dropped it straight into a waiting wooden boxcar on the rail siding. If the leg ran too slow, or the operator forgot to open the gate, the boot pit backed up and grain spilled out around the receiving grate. Real work.
The trains still roll past the Goodrich. The leg, after a hundred years, is finally quiet.