tranferrring coal and other aggrigate materials from narrow to standard gauge..

[WaxonWaxov]

So I have a small town in the foothills where the standard-gauge RR ends.

There is a narrow gauge line that starts in that town and then goes into hills/mountains to get coal, gravel, ore, etc.

How would that stuff be transferred from the narrow to standard? Would the narrow hoppers dump into conveyors that haul the material into piles or even 'grain elevator like' structures to then be loaded into standard gauge hoppers?

Thanks

 

[markpierce]

Typically, a narrow gauge track would be elevated over the standard gauge to drop directly into the standard gauge cars or into an elevated bin for temporary storage for later loading of the standard gauge carss.  Gravity was made to do the work, not expensive, power-hungry and susceptible-to-break machines.  The narrow gauge cars need to be able to dump with either side or bottom hatches.

Mark

[yankee flyer]

Hello 
I'm also working on that kind of diorama and was wondering what kind of cars would be used to deliver (coal and aggregate) to a small business owner in the late 40s or early 50s? Would they be side dump or bottom dump? At this point I can't change the track levels. After the product is out of the cars I was thinking, use an end loader to move it around.    Uh oh Is this considered high jacking a thread? Sorrrry

Thanks anyhoo

Lee

 

[Railway Man]

WaxonWaxov

So I have a small town in the foothills where the standard-gauge RR ends.

There is a narrow gauge line that starts in that town and then goes into hills/mountains to get coal, gravel, ore, etc.

How would that stuff be transferred from the narrow to standard? Would the narrow hoppers dump into conveyors that haul the material into piles or even 'grain elevator like' structures to then be loaded into standard gauge hoppers?

Thanks

99% of the time in the world of railroading, the narrow-gauge car was switched into a track parallel to a standard-gauge car.  Men shoveled the contents from one car into another.  Men were cheap.  Machines were expensive.  The parallel track for the inbound cars might have been elevated above the parallel track for the outbound cars, but not very often did anyone bother, because 90% of the shoveling effort is lifting the material from the bottom of the car to the top of the sidewalls.

Gravity unloading was quite rare because if the volume of business justified an investment in a dumping apparatus, it usually justified standard-gauging the narrow-gauge line too, or investing in a concentrator, smelter, or something like that at the source of the material to get rid of the requirement for transferring a lot of material between gauges.  Or, a standard-gauge line was built to some other location producing the same thing (coal, copper ore, etc.) and because it was much cheaper to operate the narrow-gauge served mine went out of business.

Conveyor belts were not broadly used until the late 1920s because the rubber-making technology wasn't nearly good enough.  The belts were usually very short -- like on the order of 10-40 feet -- and flat or slightly descending.  Elevating belts did not come into broad use until post WWII.  Long-distance belts (thousands of feet long) did not come into broad use until the 1950s.

RWM

[Railway Man]

yankee flyer

Hello 
I'm also working on that kind of diorama and was wondering what kind of cars would be used to deliver (coal and aggregate) to a small business owner in the late 40s or early 50s? Would they be side dump or bottom dump? At this point I can't change the track levels. After the product is out of the cars I was thinking, use an end loader to move it around.    Uh oh Is this considered high jacking a thread? Sorrrry

Thanks anyhoo

Lee

 

Western railroads favored the drop-bottom gondola for coal, ore, concentrates, sugar beets, and sand and gravel, and did not begin purchasing standard "cross hoppers" in large quantities until the 1960s.  The beauty of a drop-bottom gon is that it did not require an elevated structure to unload, and it could be used for everything including rail, lumber, and logs.  The receiver of a dry, bulk product just cranked open the doors, and shoveled the product from the ground into his truck, factory, or wagon. 

Vast quantities of aggregate and sand, as well as coal, ore concentrates, and other bulk dry commodities, were also shipped in ordinary gons throughout the U.S., and many a man made his living shoveling them out by hand.  Eastern railroads favored the hopper for coal, which required an elevated structure, but a lot of them were emptied by hand, too.  Some western railroads such as the D&RGW also made extensive use of boxcars for ore, concentrates, and particularly for coal.  The boxcar protected against theft of the expensive and desirable lump grades of coal, and the coal merchant used it as a lockable, cheap storage warehouse, dispensing coal out the door daily until it was made empty.  The boxcar also provided some protection against freezing.  "Boxcar loaders" equipped most western coal mines from the 1920s through the 1950s.

Track-laying end loaders appeared in the late 1940s and early 1950s but in small quantities and were typically small machines because the technology of hydraulics was new and it wasn't very good.  Up-scaling of the technology into mid-size machines took awhile to work figure out.  Almost no coal or aggregate merchants purchased tracked machines to load from rail cars into trucks or wagons, because track-laying machines are costly to purchase and maintain, and a man with a shovel could do the same job cheaper.  Caterpillar dominated this market and its 955 was a common and useful mid-size earthmover by the early 1960s, but was rarely used for the purpose you describe. 

Frank Hough invented the wheel loader in the late 1940s and sold it to International Harvester as its Hough Payloader Division in 1952.  The wheel loader achieved instant market acceptance and thus was developed rapidly during the 1950s.  By the early 1960s it had achieved its modern form -- articulated, rear-engine, Z-bar linkage, and big size.  There is still no machine that can match the economics of a wheel loader for loading out of a pile.  The big manufacturers in the 1950s were Hough/IH, Michigan/Clark, and Allis-Chalmers.  Caterpillar and Euclid entered the market circa 1960.  It would be appropriate to have a small, non-articulated wheel loader in a coal yard or ready-mix plant in the early 50s -- like a 1- or 2-yard machine.  Here's a poor-quality photo: http://www.adclassix.com/ads2/55houghpayloader.htm

RWM

[dehusman]

In many cases coal was cleaned (removed rocks for the coal) and sorted by sizes or crushed to a uniform size.  To do this you have to unload the coal from the cars.  On the East Broad Top RR the narrow gauge brought in the coal, dumped it into the breaker/cleaner and thenafter the coal was cleaned it was loaded into standard gauge hoppers.  There was no lost motion or inefficiency when compared to an all standard gauge operation because the coal would have to be transferred from one car to another in any case.

[WaxonWaxov]

dehusman

In many cases coal was cleaned (removed rocks for the coal) and sorted by sizes or crushed to a uniform size.  To do this you have to unload the coal from the cars.  On the East Broad Top RR the narrow gauge brought in the coal, dumped it into the breaker/cleaner and thenafter the coal was cleaned it was loaded into standard gauge hoppers.  There was no lost motion or inefficiency when compared to an all standard gauge operation because the coal would have to be transferred from one car to another in any case.

Yea, this was kinda what I was thinking.

Railway Man

Conveyor belts were not broadly used until the late 1920s because the rubber-making technology wasn't nearly good enough.  The belts were usually very short -- like on the order of 10-40 feet -- and flat or slightly descending.  Elevating belts did not come into broad use until post WWII.  Long-distance belts (thousands of feet long) did not come into broad use until the 1950s.

I am modeling transistion era (unlike most narrow gauge modelers) and I should have mentioned that.

thanks to all.

 

 

[dehusman]

WaxonWaxov

dehusman

In many cases coal was cleaned (removed rocks for the coal) and sorted by sizes or crushed to a uniform size.  To do this you have to unload the coal from the cars.  On the East Broad Top RR the narrow gauge brought in the coal, dumped it into the breaker/cleaner and thenafter the coal was cleaned it was loaded into standard gauge hoppers.  There was no lost motion or inefficiency when compared to an all standard gauge operation because the coal would have to be transferred from one car to another in any case.

Yea, this was kinda what I was thinking.

The good news is that the EBT is prretty well documented, both in books and on line plus they have a historical society.  mr has done at least 2 articles over the last 20-25 years on the EBT.  You should be able to do some research on line for the EBT.

[tgindy]

dehusman

The good news is that the EBT is prretty well documented, both in books and on line plus they have a historical society.

Be sure to check out the current 2009 Model Railroad Planning with sub-emphasis on interchange planning and in-depth prototype background...

[1] Workshop Tips - Layout Design Elements (GMR supplement) by Tony Koester has the 9-page "Small and mid-size yards" article including prototype narrow guage East Broad Top's coal-hauling interchange with the Class I - Pennsylvania Railroad. There is also a blueprint copy of the original interchange trackage plans plus a half dozen other interchange blueprint/layout plans.

[2] Model a "steam" - electric interchange by Clark Propst, while traction-centered, is an example of a surviving interchange with today's Class I Union Pacific and Mason City & Lake City electric/industrial railroad. This article tackles the age-old interchange challenge of how to angle the Class  trackage while permitting actual exchange of railroad cars with the smaller industrial shortline, Simply substitute the words "narrow guage" for the word "electric."

http://www.trains.com/mrr/default.aspx?c=a&id=3036

Kalmbach's articles like these, I have found, with blending of layout planning with prototype history and prototype planning rationale (the LDE - Layout Design Elements) are among the best of Model Railroader Magazine's efforts.

Two other coal railroading resources...

[1] Just picked up PDF-Download (at a 40% discount), Buiilding a coal-hauling model railroad, of Tony Koester's 48-page/6-part series from 1998 Model Railroader(s) about his Allegheny Midland - Coal Fork Extension. It provided me with broader prototype insights that are similar to many of the considerations in this thread, but with a little more prototype application to the actual model railroad layout.

http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/mrpdf054.html

[2] How about The Model Railroader's Guide to Coal Railroading by Tony Koester?

http://kalmbachcatalog.stores.yahoo.net/12453.htm

[Tugboat Tony]

 I know the D&RGW used to have a rotary dumper in Salida CO  that they called the barrel.  the foundation for it is still there in the old yard.

[Railway Man]

 

Tugboat Tony

 I know the D&RGW used to have a rotary dumper in Salida CO  that they called the barrel.  the foundation for it is still there in the old yard.

That's right -- it transferred mostly limestone and dolomite from the CF&I Quarry on the Monarch Branch for CF&I Minnequa (Pueblo) Works.

If I could editorialize, model railroaders seem to prefer the unusual and the obscure to the ordinary and the everyday.  For every Salida barrel dumper, there were 1,000 team tracks were laborers shoveled by hand.  Being a dumb railroader type, I'm much more impressed by a model railroad that faithfully models the ordinary.  But then, I'm also one of those guys that prefers a slab of meatloaf with gravy and mashed potatoes and green beans served piping hot, than the latest free-range balsamic pine-nut braised chicken pesto brioche gnocchi pasta with essence of Tibetan yak fat arranged in cute little piles on a plate the size of a manhole cover with artistic swirls of choclate sauce.

RWM

[WaxonWaxov]

Railway Man

...the latest free-range balsamic pine-nut braised chicken pesto brioche gnocchi pasta with essence of Tibetan yak fat arranged in cute little piles on a plate the size of a manhole cover with artistic swirls of choclate sauce.

Hey don't knock Tibetan yak fat

[Railway Man]

WaxonWaxov

Railway Man

...the latest free-range balsamic pine-nut braised chicken pesto brioche gnocchi pasta with essence of Tibetan yak fat arranged in cute little piles on a plate the size of a manhole cover with artistic swirls of choclate sauce.

Hey don't knock Tibetan yak fat

 

You do know that yak fat has a special meaning in railroading???

[erikem]

Railway Man

You do know that yak fat has a special meaning in railroading???

 

From a rather infamous rate case, the RR's complaining about the as if the tonnage of yak fat would surpass the tonnage of coal out of the PRB. 

[Railway Man]

erikem

Railway Man

You do know that yak fat has a special meaning in railroading???

 

From a rather infamous rate case, the RR's complaining about the as if the tonnage of yak fat would surpass the tonnage of coal out of the PRB. 

 

Not sure I understand the reference, but the Yak Fat Case greatly predated the Powder River Basin. It occurred in 1965, when a traffic manager for a trucking company in Omaha with authority to haul meat submitted an application to haul rendered lard.  The railroad rate bureau promptly complained, as it did in all new applications (and not to pick on railroads, the truckers did the same when the railroads filed an application).  Tiring of this ridiculous state of affairs, the trucker then filed an application to haul "Yak Fat, Omaha to Chicago, 45 cents per hundred pounds."  The railroad rate bureau and 13 companies promptly protested that, too, as noncompensatory.  The ICC then suspended the proposed rate for Yak Fat -- a commodity that did not exist in the U.S. and had never been produced, marketed, or transported in the U.S.  The trucker then called the Journal of Commerce and Traffic World and exposed the absurdity, which gained him 15 minutes of fame in the national press and a photograph of him posing next to a yak in the Omaha Zoo in Business Week and major newspapers.  The ICC was unamused and filed suit against him; the suit was thrown out by an administrative law judge. It was famous for years in transportation circles as an example of the idiocy of regulation, but has faded away since deregulation of railroads and trucking in 1979-1980.

RWM

[erikem]

 My comment about tonnage relative to PRB was an anachronism - main point was that the RR's were acting as if there was significant traffic when in reality there was absolutely no traffic. Not really sure that I would want to see an operation that could produce 100 millions tons of yak fat per year.

Anyway, I remember the case making 60 Minutes back in the early 70's.

Edit:

PRB coal was being shipped in 1969 - I remember seeing an NP coal train hauled by F units in August 1969 - sure wish I had a camera for that.

A bit more on topic - the SP narrow gauge line (formerly Carson & Colorado) had a trestle for gravity transfer of bulk materials (mainly talc) in Owenyo CA, The Eureka & Palisade had a trestle in Palisade NV, and the East Tennessee and West North Carolina had a gravity transfer trestle in Johnson City TN. A good reference is George W. Hilton's American Narrow Gauge Railroads, which also describes the Ramsey transfer pit (for placing narrow gauge trucks under a standard gauge car).

The June 1967 issue of Model Railroader had an HOn3 layout with an HO connection and included a trestle for bulk transfer - and there was discussion of the EBT's Timber Transfer used for putting standard gauge cars on 3' gaige trucks.

[WSOR 3801]

Railway Man

But then, I'm also one of those guys that prefers a slab of meatloaf with gravy and mashed potatoes and green beans served piping hot, than the latest free-range balsamic pine-nut braised chicken pesto brioche gnocchi pasta with essence of Tibetan yak fat arranged in cute little piles on a plate the size of a manhole cover with artistic swirls of choclate sauce.

RWM

 

I couldn't resist..

I think one of the team track customers on my layout is shipping yak fat, part of an LCL movement.

[erikem]

dehusman

In many cases coal was cleaned (removed rocks for the coal) and sorted by sizes or crushed to a uniform size.  To do this you have to unload the coal from the cars.  On the East Broad Top RR the narrow gauge brought in the coal, dumped it into the breaker/cleaner and thenafter the coal was cleaned it was loaded into standard gauge hoppers.  There was no lost motion or inefficiency when compared to an all standard gauge operation because the coal would have to be transferred from one car to another in any case.

 

I was thumbing through vol. 1 of Trains (from my father-in-law) and the August 1941 issue has the best article I've seen on EBT operations. Note that it was written when the EBT was still a going concern. As deshusman mentioned, most of the coal was processed in Mt Union, so the change of gauge was not an issue for that traffic. In addition, the EBT carried stone from quarries on the line for use by a firm making silica bricks - raw material shipped in via narrow gauge, shipped out via standard gauge. The EBT did have some three rail track in Mt Union and a couple of standard gauge switchers.

A few of the on-line mines did not have their coal processed in Mt Union, so the EBT brought in standard gauge cars using the Timber Transfer at Mt Union to swap out standard gauge trucks for narrow gauge trucks. Since the distances were short with respect to the Colorado lines, the EBT figured it was more economical to swap trucks than to transload.

The EBT was an unusual narrow gauge, there was enough coal traffic to keep it maintained more like a standard gauge line than a narrow gauge line. About the only reason that it stayed a narrow gauge line is that there wasn't enough tonnage moving untouched through Mt Union to justify the expense of changing the gauge. As an example, the one surviving three foot gauge RR in California runs from a mine to the US Gypsum plant in Plaster City.
 

[WaxonWaxov]

great info... thanks all