Question on Railroad ops.

[Anonymous]

Hello all.

I am new to the whole operating thing so please forgive a silly question.

Lets say a coal mine is along a rail line and the coal is picked uo by train. I am assuming the railroad would send a locomotive to pick up hopper cars that had allreadybeen loaded. Is this the case? or does the railroad bring the cars out to the mine and waits while the cars are loaded?

If the cars are dropped off at the location and the railroad locomotive departs to deliver or pick up other cars, How would the employees at the coal mine move the cars to be loaded? (assuming only one car could be loaded at a time.) Would the coal mine have its own locomotive?

Thanks

Joe

[twcenterprises]

That could go either way. Sometimes larger mines have their own switcher, so the RR drops off empties and picks up the loads. I've seen a quarry near here that uses a rubber tire front end loader to move a few cars at a time. A smaller mine or a really huge mine might "live load" the cars while the train crew waits. I read about one place where a train crew would pull the cars slowly under the loading conveyer as the cars were loaded, so as such, the train crew was needed to load the cars.

For modelling purposes, some of us use a "empties in, loads out" approach (during track planning stages), some will "load" the cars with fake loads, and a few run real loads with working model conveyors (or something similar).

Brad

[Anonymous]

The answer depends on the size of the loading operation, and the era. Years ago and to some extent today with smaller mine operations empties would be brought to the mine and swapped for outgoing loads. The empty hopper would be spotted so that the mine staff could use a winch to move the cars once they were loaded, or the track under the mine would be on a grade that would allow the mine staff to release the brakes and allow gravity to roll the next car under the loading area. Most of the older tipples would not be able to load hoppers fast enough to justify delaying the train crew waiting for the hoppers to be filled and ready to depart.
Today in the larger mine operations utilize "flood" loaders to load an entire unit train of hoppers while the rail crew slowly pulls the train of empties under the loader. The train then departs to its destination, or to a yard to be consolidated into a larger unit train for shipment to the customer.

Will

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the respnses!

I plan to model later in the steam era and would like to use the " empties in loaded out" scheme. I am not sure of the size of my industries yet so time will tell which direction to go.

Thanks again

Joe

[tomikawaTT]

Emptys in, loads out pretty much implies that either:

1. The mine run will drop off an entire cut of empties, then pull an equivalent cut of loads. The cars would have been loaded as Overdurff describes, moved either by winch and cable or (more usually in US) gravity.

2. The mine run will bring up the cars the mine has requested, then spend all morning switching them under the tipple, one or a few at a time. (Tony Koester described having seen a Y-6 doing this at the end of steam on the N&W.)

Flood loading an 18,000 ton train while the locos inch ahead at a slow crawl got started in the 1960's, and is now extremely common. There was one John Armstrong track plan that showed such an operation empty train in, loaded train out - but I've never heard of anyone building that feature. (Synchronizing the two trains would be a bear!)

[Anonymous]

On the Latta Sub- CPRS usually puts empties in and loads out with the crew standing by until the loads are ready. If the crew dies (for time), then the RR replaces the crew when the cars are ready. Some mines use a car mover, and some mines have or a hill/ pusher that pushes the loaded car down hill similar to a hump yard.

Mike (CPRS train reporter).

Edited for clarity!('[:D]')

[espee3004]

The book Appalachian Coal Hauler by Hough and Ed Wolfe has a detailed description of switching the mines on the Interstate RR. Very good. Ed has authored five books on the Interstate and the area around it. All very interesting.

[jimrice4449]

If you have a "penninsula" type section of your RR you can run mt in and ld out w/o adding or taking off loads. Run your mine spur through the backdrop and put a coal consuming industry on the other side. W/ 1 string of lds & 1 of mts the local can pull the lds and spot the mts into the mine, run around the RR until it comes to the consumer industry at the other end of the "mine spur" on the oposite side of the backdrop. The MTs you spotted into the mine side of the track are now MTs to be pulled and replaced by the loads you previously pulled from the mine.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all the responses.

After thinking about this here is what I may attempt to do. At some point I may wi***o get into some "fast clock" operations.

Using the gravity feed system to move cars into the load area. I may try and rig a catch of some kind to automatically feed the next car into the loading area every 45 minuits or so.

This way I could drop off a train of 10 empty cars, remove the loaded cars, and come back a few hours later and do it again. I read a post in these forums about removable car loads and will try and implement this as well.

Joe

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

Some mines have small remote-control switchers to move empties and loads as needed. Most of them seem to have been rebuilt from old S2's with the cab and 539 engine removed and a small Cummins or other truck-size diesel engine installed in the old radiator area.

[Jetrock]

I'd definitely like to see photos of that sort of remote switcher--it might be a fine "prime mover" for a mini layout or cool kitbashing project!

[Anonymous]

Clearly I don't know your layout plan and/or whether you want to model the mine or coal loader itself... but... if you just want to be "near the mine" one possibility is as follows.

Draw yourself a letter Y. Where you model will be either the junction or just "south" of it. The mine is on one arm (say the "north east"), the destination for the coal and source of the empties is on the other arm.
If you really want you can run round your coal trains in your layout area. If there isn't facility in your area the trains will run through, round round and come back.
You get coal empties AND coal loads in both directions.
This does happen in practice.
You could organise a handoff between the mine run and the main run wherever you do your "running round". This might be between different companies.
There was a thread on this in the general discussion back last Nov or Dec.

I think that the remote controlled mine locos were known as "Zombies" at times. As far as I know you can use almost any loco with enough power... even a B unit. Some Zomies I've seen pics of have had their cab windows boarded over.

Have fun!