Looking for a 1950 Skip Loader

[SpaceMouse]

Or earlier. Frankly I don't know what one would look like, but I need it to be able to move coal around a small coal distribution center (for heating homes and small factories) and depost it in small trucks.

Any ideas for a source?

[Pathfinder]

Did a search for what a skip loader looks like, maybe you could post a true-life sample?

This?

or this?

These machines are sometimes called 'skiploaders' for reasons not to clear to me, but I suppose if you ever tried to load something with the scoop maybe you would have an idea about the name. The front loader is not as effective as it looks. This is particularly true with the loaders that lack 4-wheel drive. The problem is that when you try to scoop something, it shifts the weight off the rear tires which are the primary driving tires to the front wheels, and then not much happens. In recent years there has been a trend toward front wheel drive which helps a lot.

http://www.vannattabros.com/iron23.html

Or something else? 

 

Of course, there is this 

 

94069 Flatcar w/skip loader

MSRP: $54.99

Ours: $40.00

 

 

[SpaceMouse]

Those look reasonable but they wouldn't have the trencher. The one on the flat car is too modern. I can't post a picture, cause I don't know what they would look like in 1950.

For laughs and giggles, I'm using it for the layout on the coal trestle (see #9).

[Dave-the-Train]

For 1950s you would probably want something pre-hydraulic rams.  The sort of thing you would be looking at would be a tractor with a front loader, bolted on.  This would be cable operated with the cables positioned over the centre of the bucket to lift it by being run over a metal frame bolted onto/around the tractor.  The winch part of the mechanism was usually at the back behind the seat.  These beasts were ungainly and heavy.  They were not best suited to small yards.

They came in tracked and wheeled variants.  Wheels would be more likely in town / on a hard surface.  In the 50s some would be likely to be war surplus.  You might even build your own around a jeep.  The frame usually looks similar to a ROP cage on a logging tractor.

I'm sure that there are some models in Walthers Cat but can't find my copy. 

For the 50s, even in the US, manual labour (hand shovels) would account for much of the work now done by backhoes and mini diggers... especially in a small yard.

If you have a hopper unloading facility why do you need to shuffle the coal around with a digger???  Coal has a nasty tendecy to go to dust (except the very hard stuff).  You don't want to shift it around more than necessary.

Some sort of conveyor (with or without a tray to push under the cars to catch the unloading coal might be more appropriate.  I thought that you had one of these on a previous layout?

PS

Hoppers would normally drop straight into small trucks as far as possible... or drop into a pit feeding a conveyor loader... or onto the tray on the bottom end of the loader as mention.  I think Walthers do one of these loaders in a set with some other coalyard gear.

Did the US deliver coal in sacks back then?  I'm thinking of open sacks rather than "prepacked".  In the UK these travelled on flatbed trucks stacked upright.  Don't know if you did the same.  For places like schools with small boilers we developed hopper lorries with a conveyor floor in the 60s.  Again, I don't know if you did this but it would make an interesting variant to have standing in the yard.

For bagging coal was often fed into a standing hopper and then dropped into bags on a scale before being shifted onto the delivery truck.

If space is very restricted you might have a crane placed strategically and shift coal around with a clamshell bucket...

Then again, back at war surplus, people who had been in the forces often got inventive with what they had available...  This was how JCB got started.  Joe Bamford just started adding useful bits to tractors.

The pics posted so far are all much too modern in concept as well as specific design.  One thing, very few tractors and similar machines would have cabs... weather protection, if any was often a piece of recycled tarpaulin stretched over a metal frame... the metal was whatever could be scrounges... unless it was the ROPS type frame... had to not jam up the cables...

[alco_fan]

Labor was pretty cheap, probably would have been hand-shoveled in those days with maybe a simple conveyer.

A quick google search suggests the skiploader was invented in the 1950s by Marrell.

http://www.amplirollusa.com/

Check the text in the lower left-hand column. These probably would have been pretty expensive in the beginning, so maybe unlikely for this job.

If you want to how what they looked like, writing the company a friendly letter might yield a photo or two.

 

[espee3004]

Try a Woodland Scenics track type loader. They also may have a wheeled tractor with a bucket

Ralph H

Amargosa Railroad

[Anonymous]

Maybe a Bycarus (Spelling?) shovel?

Or the IHC lumber loader re-equippted with clamshells.

I use this:

 

http://www.firstgearonline.com/category.cfm?catID=2233

 http://www.firstgearreplicas.com/storeImages/Thumbnails/0312-80%20US%20Forest%20Service1.jpg

Except mine has a winch on the rear to hopefully move loaded hoppers into position until I can find something suitable.

You probably already know how coal is delivered to homes through the basement windows into the coal bin in that time. The house I grew up in had oil, but coal would not have been too difficult.

[Hillyard]

If you're really wanting a tractor, instead of some kind of conveyor,

Check the middle of this page,

http://www.antiquefarming.com/caseconstruction.html 

especially the Case CI with pre hydrallic loader shown loading a 1920's solide wheel dumptruck,

or lower down,

a wheeled tractor with hydraulic bucket loader:

"(the Industrial) Division's first project"...after 1947..." was to design an industrial loader. This power loader tractor (Models 30, 40 and 50) consisted of a hydraulic front end loader mounted on the SI, DI, VAI or LAI, and sold as a complete unit"

see also http://www.antiquefarming.com/johndeeregp.html

"The true beginnings of Deere's industrial line is represented by the 420 Crawler-Loader, although it was still painted in agricultural colors. The first full, thirty-two-page brochure, A-1044, was issued in December 1956 ".  This is a crawler with front bucket.

using Google I also came across JD "tricycle" type farm tractors with smaller front bucket attachments that were on arms attaching/pivoting towards the rear of the tractor.

 

hope this helps,

Doug C

[tomikawaTT]

Chip,

Back in your era, the usual moving device would have been a portable conveyor - the kind Walthers sells in a 3-pack.  The other device was a shovel, powered by a pair of 0-5-0s.  I recall coal being dumped on the ground and conveyored up into the dealer's delivery truck (with a lot of shovel assistance) at Port Washington (LonGiland!) in the 40's.

Dave, I hate to tell you, but hydraulic lift trucks (Gar Wood patent) were old news by 1950.  Gar, himself, was an old (and very rich) man by then.  The ones I remember had a small lift gate in the center of the truckbed rear gate, so the coal could be unloaded into the delivery chute and not scattered.  When the load was just about clear, the delivery driver would climb up into the truckbed and urge the last lumps out the gate with a hand scoop.  The chutes were carried by the truck, hung from hooks along the truckbed.

FWIW, Blue Coal was a popular brand of anthracite domestic heating fuel.  The coal had been sprayed with a thin wash of blue paint.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[Zandoz]

I grew up in the 1960s passing two old "in their last days" coal facilities when going to and from school....one a small one-man operation, the other a larger operation.  Both were using ancient (to me) equipment that appeared to be old farm tactors. I'm guessing now probably from the 1930s-1940s, fitted with front end scoops, and rear blades. I remeber the one used by the smaller operation was a Case.  The scoops were used to load the trucks , the rear blades to push the "escapees" back to the piles.  The larger operation also used conveyors, with their low ends burried in the piles to load trucks...in those cases, when the pile got too low to gravity feed into the conveyor, the tractor would scoup from the remaining pile, into the conveyor funnel.

[reklein]

Woodland scenics for sure has the old farm tractor equipped with a loader. For the more successful dealer. They also have the whole yard in a little kit. I think its still available.

[Dave-the-Train]

Chip,

Dave, I hate to tell you, but hydraulic lift trucks (Gar Wood patent) were old news by 1950.  Gar, himself, was an old (and very rich) man by then.  The ones I remember had a small lift gate in the center of the truckbed rear gate, so the coal could be unloaded into the delivery chute and not scattered.  When the load was just about clear, the delivery driver would climb up into the truckbed and urge the last lumps out the gate with a hand scoop.  The chutes were carried by the truck, hung from hooks along the truckbed.

FWIW, Blue Coal was a popular brand of anthracite domestic heating fuel.  The coal had been sprayed with a thin wash of blue paint.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

I'm aware that hydraulic rams were used in tipper trucks... from at least the 1920s if not much earlier... possibly the 1890s ???  Why they weren't used to operate digger and dozer blades is a complete mistery to me.  I could speculate that the earlier truck ones were powered from a PTO off the truck's gearbox... but I see no reason why that shouldn't have also been done on a wheeled or crawler tractor.

At least one regular production line truck (Scammel IIRC) in the 20s or 30s could tip either side or over the back.  The driver just had to switch which ram worked and which bearings held or released.

The cable operated diggers (and log haulers) were incredibly awkward/cumbersome beasts.  It seems more strange that anyone ever bothered to go that route.  Even more strange ... I have seen the frame and cable types sitting around the overgrown back ends of yards certainly into the 90s if not more recently... some are probably still there holding up the brambles.

I take it that the delivery chutes were similar to those used on readymix concrete trucks...?

Never heard of blue coal... why was it painted?  Was it an advertising thing>  If not that was it a paint or some sort of additive supposed to make the coal burn better or more cleanly?

Just out of interest... what did they do in Japan in the 50s?

[steinjr]

Back in your era, the usual moving device would have been a portable conveyor - the kind Walthers sells in a 3-pack. 

These http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3520  ?

The other device was a shovel, powered by a pair of 0-5-0s. 

 That would work, yes

 Grin,
 Stein

 

[tomikawaTT]

Dave,

Blue Coal was a 'Brand name' product, actually a high-quality anthracite.  The blue tint was rather like the label, since the product was delivered by the truckload unwrapped.

Portable coal chutes were, typically, flat-bottomed, but used very much like the chutes used for pouring concrete.  Some delivery drivers had to get inventive with chute placement when delivering coal to buildings dating from the horse-drawn coal dray era.  Fortunately those trucks could raise their beds an incredible distance on the scissor mounts - enough daylight at the low end for a man to stand on the truck frame was not uncommon.

In Japan in the late '50s I 'minefanned' several collieries near Fukuoka.  The coal was a low-grade bituminous, extremely friable.  To keep the dust down, the crusher and drum-style sorter were under a water spray.  The water was run into a tank and the dust settled to the bottom and was recovered, mixed with a little clay and baked (low temperature, NO flame) into various forms.  The most common form for domestic use was a cylinder with perforations running parallel to the axis, burned in a flower-pot type burner called a hibachi.  Pellets like charcoal barbecue bricquettes were also produced.  I actually saw one steam loco with a tender full of those bricquettes - guess they were available cheap!

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[SpaceMouse]

Back in your era, the usual moving device would have been a portable conveyor - the kind Walthers sells in a 3-pack. 

These http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3520  ?

The other device was a shovel, powered by a pair of 0-5-0s. 

 That would work, yes

 Grin,
 Stein

 

I think that is the route I will go, although I think loading the conveyer by hand would be slow.  

 

[Dave-the-Train]

Back in your era, the usual moving device would have been a portable conveyor - the kind Walthers sells in a 3-pack. 

These http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3520  ?

The other device was a shovel, powered by a pair of 0-5-0s. 

 That would work, yes

 Grin,
 Stein

I think that is the route I will go, although I think loading the conveyer by hand would be slow.  

You're thinking late 20th century... "everything must be done yesterday".  A shovel and conveyor were fast compared to just shovels...

As I have been corrected before America had the Model T and loads of other IC engined vehicles... but WW2 started with cavalry charges... even the Germans were largely thinking in terms of the horse... and most of their supply line in the field was horse drawn.  (Yes I know about Blitzkrieg and armoured columns). 

Today most of us would fall over if we were asked to unload 5 ton of coal from a wagon in a day but that was just par for the course... if you wanted to keep your job.  (Based on historical accounts of 2 men unloading a standard coal wagon in the UK in the 50s).  While your larger locos had mechanised coaling most of our locos and your smaller ones didn't... which meant that everything that was dumped into the tender (or bunker) got to the firebox by hand... on a moving footplate... and the ash had to be removed mostly by and as well at the end of the day.

We don't have a clue how soft we have life.

[SpaceMouse]

You're thinking late 20th century... "everything must be done yesterday".  A shovel and conveyor were fast compared to just shovels...

As I have been corrected before America had the Model T and loads of other IC engined vehicles... but WW2 started with cavalry charges... even the Germans were largely thinking in terms of the horse... and most of their supply line in the field was horse drawn.  (Yes I know about Blitzkrieg and armoured columns). 

Today most of us would fall over if we were asked to unload 5 ton of coal from a wagon in a day but that was just par for the course... if you wanted to keep your job.  (Based on historical accounts of 2 men unloading a standard coal wagon in the UK in the 50s).  While your larger locos had mechanised coaling most of our locos and your smaller ones didn't... which meant that everything that was dumped into the tender (or bunker) got to the firebox by hand... on a moving footplate... and the ash had to be removed mostly by and as well at the end of the day.

We don't have a clue how soft we have life.

Life is tough in other ways.

But you are right. I've had my time with a shovel to lean on, but it has been a long time since I moved anything of consequence. Last spring I hand tilled my garden and moved a lot of dirt, and I pitched and moaned the whole time.

My ignorance of coal and how it was used runs pretty deep. Where I grew up in California we didn't have a lick of it. Now not only am I learning that people used it to run their toasters, people put it in their basements and shovelled it into their heaters. (How barbaric.)

Add to this that I'm modeling something before I was born (but too early for the historical society to give a care.) and I'm feeling pretty ignorant.   

[reklein]

This is a little OT,but in Canada on Lake Okanogan there was a steamer called the Sicamouse that was coal fired. When it pulled in at Penticton the crew had an hour to load a hopper full of coal into her bunkers. That was 38 ton of coal in an hour. I don't know how many guys were involved,but they used two wheel carts to haul and dump the coal. In turn it was shoveled into the firebox by hand and the ashes were raked out by hand and shoveled into a kind of overhead funnel that conveyed the ashes overboard. TommyR could probably tell us more about this process.

[doctorwayne]

I believe that these are the things that your're looking for.

 

I got mine frome Walthers, in a pack or 10 or 12 each of the loaders and unloaders.

The unloaders could be used as shown below, or in conjunction with a few shovel technicians. 

 

Coal was also shipped in gondolas, and if they weren't equipped with drop doors or drop sides, shovelling was the usual method of unloading. 

One of my first jobs as a steelworker was shovelling mill scale, which was taken away in motorised wheelbarrows.  At 155 lbs., I was too light to be able to control the barrows, which were rated for over a ton, so I made a deal with the two guys that I was assigned to work with (a couple of Italians, who spoke almost no English, but who were both big burly guys) that I would do the shovelling if they would run the barrows.  Even rating a full load as only half a ton, (we didn't weigh it) I figure that I shovelled about 15 tons of scale every morning before lunch.  (I woulda done more, but those guys wouldn't work any faster.)

Wayne

[Dave-the-Train]

 

Life is tough in other ways.

But you are right. I've had my time with a shovel to lean on, but it has been a long time since I moved anything of consequence. Last spring I hand tilled my garden and moved a lot of dirt, and I pitched and moaned the whole time.

My ignorance of coal and how it was used runs pretty deep. Where I grew up in California we didn't have a lick of it. Now not only am I learning that people used it to run their toasters, people put it in their basements and shovelled it into their heaters. (How barbaric.)

Add to this that I'm modeling something before I was born (but too early for the historical society to give a care.) and I'm feeling pretty ignorant.   

Back then most people didn't have any energy left to be stressed.  Also people weren't constantly supposed to change the world.

Meanwhile, back at the OT... a good source of recent history is the TV of the day... even stuff like "Dragnet"... just forget the storyline and keep your eyes on the background... rolling images of what the world was like "back then".

Novels of an era can be useful too.

[tomikawaTT]

Minor historical footnote:

The 'hero' of the Tennessee Ernie Ford song, Sixteen Tons, was a coal miner who, from the lyrics, couldn't make enough to keep up with his bill at the company store, even after loading,  "Sixteen tons of Number Nine coal..." in one day, with a shovel.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with a couple of collieries)