Just a quick question about haulin' coal

[jguess733]

How do those of you that model the coal industry, or any other mineing operation for that matter, model your coal loads? My real question is, when you deliver your empties to the mine, do you switch out the empties for loaded cars between operating sessions, or do you pull your empites around and imagine them as being loaded? On my next layout I'm going to add a small time mining operation, and I was just curious about how other modelers operate. Thanks for the help guys.

[cwclark]

I saw a layout at a train show once that had a real coal operation..the hoppers would back into the coal shute and a small mechanical lever would dump the coal into each of the hoppers...the train would take the load to the other side of the layout where it was dumped a car at a time into a box that was then hand carried over to the original coal mine ,dumped back into the main hopper again, and the process started over ...now, on my layout you pretty much got it right...i have a train of empties and loads and they go back and forth from a mine to a coal fired power plant..i make the loads by glueing a cut-to-fit piece of notebook paper into the hopper bay and shape it into a mound...then I smear glue on top of the paper that is in place in the hopper bay..i then sprinkle fi***ank charcoal over the glue and wahlaa!...a coal load in a hopper....Chuck

[NZRMac]

[#ditto]

Same question

I have heard some people run right thru a coal loading facility and thru a tunnel with an empty load, and have another train the same but loaded come back out of the tunnel and thru the coal load facility and pretend it's the same train??


Ken.

[Jetrock]

Indeed, some folks do that--the Kalmbach book on the "Clinchfield Railroad" project (from the series of MR articles) does exactly that! The spur entering the coal mine goe through a hill and comes out of the powerplant! That way, you can stick a trainload of full cars into thepowerplant and pull out empties, and do the opposite at the coal mine!

[Anonymous]

I plan to load my coal hoppers for weight and assume they are empty and on way back to mine.

[IRONROOSTER]

Loads in / empties out is described by John Armstrong in his book "Track Plannning for Realistic Operation".
Enjoy
Paul