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Remembering an "Ike" We Liked and the Railroads Crossing Kansas that Helped Shape Our Process Industries |
September 18, 2008 |
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Posted by Don Dunnington at September 18, 2008 09:13 AM |
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Hurricane Ike's recent unwelcome visit to our Gulf Coast calls to mind a friendlier "Ike," Dwight David Eisenhower, who was widely admired in the U.S. and around the world for his leadership in WWII and then as a U.S. President. I recently spent a few moments outside his boyhood home in Abilene, Kansas.
As soon as we completed our review of the new Premier Pneumatics website at their home office in Salina, Kansas, I got on the road for a three hour drive to Kansas City, from where I would fly home the next morning. About 30 minutes into my drive on I-70, I came to the exit for Abilene and a sign pointing to the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library.
It was 6:30, and I figured the library would be closed (it was). But I got this picture of Eisenhower's boyhood home. In the background to the left of the house you may be able to see railcars (shown larger here).
The Eisenhower grounds cover several acres, but in Kansas you're seldom far from train tracks. Premier got its start in pneumatic conveying with its railcar loaders and unloaders. From loading and unloading railcars, it was a short hop inside the factories to vacuum and pressure conveying solutions for a wide range of applications for the plastics, plastics compounding, food, pharmaceutical and chemical process industries.
For a few boom years Abilene intersected the western terminus of the Kansas Pacific (now Union Pacific) railroad and the end point of the famous Chisholm Trail. From 1867 to 1872, cowboys drove some three million head of cattle along this 1,000 mile trail from Texas to Abilene, where they were shipped to eastern markets. Until lawmen like Wild Bill Hickok tamed the town, Abilene was known as the wildest town in the Wild West.
From trails to railroads and highways the movement of food and bulk materials across the country played a large role in the colorful history of Kansas. And material handling continues as a major presence among the businesses and industries that came out of Kansas.
Today Premier Pneumatics is a global provider of pneumatic conveying systems. Their bulk unloading and storage systems are used in truck and railcar loading and unloading.
Premier's development of complex vacuum and pressure conveying systems has lead to an incredible array of pneumatic conveying components from their popular airlock rotary valves to vacuum sequencing receivers, self-contained loaders, bin vents, diverter valves, and storage tanks.
And it all started with a railroad that crossed Kansas.
Don Dunnington
Moderator
