So, I was watching the web cam in Rochelle and there was nothing coming, so i switched to another tab. I came back, and there was a long coal drag stopped on the UP line, and it was fouling the BNSF main line. The time on the web cam changed, so it thought that the picture was just frozen. I refreshed the page, and it was still stopped. I watched for a few more minutes, and it started to crawl towards Proviso. Did anyone else see this, or am I just crazy?
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Ok now im really crazy. There just an empty coal drag headed in the other direction. Im pretty sure that it was the same one. How long does it take to unloas a 100+ car coal train and send it back in the other direction?
It was a different train.
It takes roughly 4-8 hours to unload a train plus the time to get to the plant plus the time to get back.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
It's entirely probable that the train stopped to foul the diamond for a while--not to mention the grade crossings throughout the city--if conditions on the tracks ahead warranted. I suspect that things weren't fouled any longer than they had to be, though.
As for whether it's the same train returning, I'd like to ask you what made you think so. I can't read numbers off my screen, and that would be the only way you'd be able to see if it was the same train. To someone who isn't used to a coal operation (be it the Powder River Basin now or the Pocahontas railroads back in the day), the number of coal trains operated is totally amazing insane something (my wife's tired of those other adjectives after watching the Extreme Trains show on the History Channel). It's conceivable that you could see identical-looking sets of cars going in opposite directions as close in time as you did. The Pleasant Priarie (Wisconsin) plant, for example, goes through a couple of trainloads of coal per day.
As for the time it takes to return, anything you saw eastbound at Rochelle goes at least as far as West Chicago on UP rails (that's 45 miles; top speed is 50 for a coal train), then has to go at least another twenty to get to the power plant where it will be unloaded (taking 4 to 8 hours, based on what Dave said). We send some trains as far east as New York state over this route.
Hey, Dave H.--say something, so we can watch your "odometer" roll over!
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
I've seen trains foul that diamond a number of times. This past spring I would watch Curling games on the CBC in one window and the Rochelle camera in another. I am not sure what is there but I often saw UP out bound (away from the picture) trains stop for something, normally for not more than a minute and then proceed. I can only recall one inbound stopping on the diamond and there were hi-rail (MOW?) trucks about and I don't remember how long that rain stopped.
AgentKid
So shovel the coal, let this rattler roll.
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Depends on the type of cars. I have seen a hundred bottom dump hoppers unloaded in just over a hour. On the other hand rotary dump gons might take your 4-8 hrs .
I recall reading somewhere about the relative times it took to dump coal trains consisting of hoppers versus gons, coupled or uncoupled during dumping. It's true that the rapid-dumping hoppers unload much more quickly, but they also require a bit of time before unloading to charge their air systems. Also, I'm not aware of any plants in the upper Midwest that have facilities for unloading these cars. Some rotary dumpers (I've been told) are capable of handling two cars at once. A dumper like this, along with dumping the coal nearly twice as fast in ideal conditions, would eliminate the problems caused by mis-oriented rotary couplers.
They were rotary dump gons
Unloading times for coal train vary considerably. Dependencies include equipment type (rotary-dump, rapid-discharge, advanced rapid-discharge, manual-door); dumper type (rotary, rapid-discharge); dumper throughput rate; coal stacking rate; size of the coal pile and whether thec coal pile is all live, dead, or both; track configuration, how the train is indexed through the loader, whether the train can be dumped without breaking it apart and putting it back together, and how the railroad serves the plant. Single-car rotary dumpers have a maximum throughput of 4,000 tph. Tandem rotary dumpers (two cars at once) have a maximum throughput of 6,000 tph (these are uncommon). Rapid-discharge dumpers have rates ranging from 4,000 to 8,000 tph. The throughput is not the same as the dumping rate; the dumping rate depends on how quickly the train is indexed through the rotary dumper or advanced through the rapid-discharge dumper. The throughput is the rate at which coal can be carried out of the dumper -- it's the rate that the conveyor belts can move coal.
A 135-car train using 286K aluminum equipment carries between 15,900 and 16,500 tons of coal depending on the type of equipment and the tare weight of the cars. A single-car rotary dumper arranged on a loop track with rotary-coupler equipment not requiring the train to be broken apart can dump a 135-car train in about 6 hours, starting when the train is spotted at the indexer and ending when the last car is released from the dumper. A rapid-discharge dumper will require about 2 to 4 hours starting when the train enters the dumper and ending when the last car exits the dumper.
Depending upon the plant and the specific contract with the railroad, additional time may be required to recrew the train, inspect the train, set-out bad-orders, pick up make-up cars, fuel and inspect the power, and rearrange the DPUs to the head end. A plant that does not have a loop track and requires the train to be broken apart or the power to run around the train adds time to this.
The best actual time I have seen for a 135-car rotary-dump train from arrival at the plant gate to the FRED leaving that gate behind is 8 hours. Twelve to 24 hours is common, and there are several very large plants that take 4 to 5 days to dump a 135-car train because of a inefficient track layout. The worst I know of needs 7 days to dump a 135-car rotary-dump train and release it back to the railroad.
The best actual time I have seen for a 135-car rapid-discharge train I have seen, from entry to exit from the plant, is four hours. Six to eight is more common. Generally plants with rapid-discharge cars chose rapid-discharge because they sought to obtain good cycle times on cars, and were designed from the beginning to turn the train quickly. I know of none that can't get it in and out in 12 hours or less, and there is one I know of that consistently moves a 90-car train through the entire plant in about 120 minutes.
The best actual time I have seen for a 105-car manual-door train is 12 hours. A week is not uncommon.
There are still several rotary-dump, non-rotary-coupler equipment dumpers in service such as KCBX in Chicago, N&W-Norfolk, and several steel mills. These dumpers can accept almost any steel car but not always an aluminum car, and dump each car individually, using gravity to exit the car from the dumper and either a "mule" or a gravity hump or a switch engine to index each car into the dumper. Throughput rates can be very high but these require big receiving and departure yards.
RWM
Check out the picture at this site http://www.kindermorgan.com/business/terminals/midwest/bulk_paducah.pdf
The white building on the bridge is dump facility built over a siding of the Paducah & Louisville. It is a two car facility set up for gravity discharge directly into barges spotted under the bridge. I have watched 100 car trains of standard 100 ton hopper cars manually unloaded in less than three hours. Road engines spot the cars and a half dozen car knockers get the doors. Nice work on a hot summer day.
I suspect that longer heavier trains may now be the norm and perhaps rapid discharge cars are employed for at least some of the inbound tonnage.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo Possum "We have met the anemone... and he is Russ." Bucky Katt "Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future." Niels Bohr, Nobel laureate in physics
jeatonI have watched 100 car trains of standard 100 ton hopper cars manually unloaded in less than three hours. Road engines spot the cars and a half dozen car knockers get the doors. Nice work on a hot summer day.
I have watched 100 car trains of standard 100 ton hopper cars manually unloaded in less than three hours. Road engines spot the cars and a half dozen car knockers get the doors. Nice work on a hot summer day.
That's impressive.
I wonder if anyone would even dream of doing that today. Mention "manual doors" to a power plant now and they look at you in abject horror and start talking about injuries.
NS has started to use the siding as a coal train parking lot for trains going to detroit edison.They need to thaw the cars before dumping the coal.As for fouling the diamond go to"F" tower in Fostoria.NS usually runs a train each way when they get clearance from CSX.
stay safe
Joe
Deshler Ohio-crossroads of the B&O Matt eats your fries.YUM! Clinton st viaduct undefeated against too tall trucks!!!(voted to be called the "Clinton St. can opener").
Thats not the only place we will foul the diamond. Just about everyday at Fremont Nebraska the Un ion Pacific crosses the BNSF just west of the yard office When we change out with the crews from North Platte at main street we will foul the crossing The BNSF dosent seem to mind
Another factor is 'Winter' - Long 'thaw sheds' to heat the cars so that they will dump out the coal. Even rotary dump cars have this problem. Bottom dump cars may need 'shakers' to assist getting the load to dump.
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
What exactly is a rotary coupler?
Rotary coupler -- actually it's a rotary drawbar, but that's what they're called anyway.
The drawbar shank can rotate freely in the drawbar pocket, allowing the car to be overturned to dump without having to uncouple it from the car next to it. The car is rotated approximately 140 degrees to empty it rapidly, then returned upright. The center point of the rotation is the coupler centerline so there's no effect on the adjacent cars. The air hoses have to be mounted in such a fashion that they don't pull apart during this process. The rotary dumper consists of a open-ended barrel with track laid through it -- the rails line up with but do not join to the adjacent fixed rails at either end which are mounted to the earth; there is a small gap. The train is indexed into the dumper one or two cars at a time, usually by either a cable indexer or rack-and-pinion indexer that inserts an arm into the couplings of the cars immediately behind the car being dumped in order to shove it forward and stop it at the right moment. Clamps come down on the car in the barrel to hold it in place and then the barrel rolls over and dumps the car, emptying its contents onto the grizzly (metal screen) to screen out any large objects. The contents then fall through onto conveyor belts that remove the contents from the dumper building and take it to a stacker.
Usually one coupler on each car is rotary and the other is standard. So long as one of the two couplers in each mated pair is rotary, the car will dump without problems. The end with the rotary coupler is usually demarked with a contrasting or bright colored painted side panel. Often one car in each trainset is a double-rotary car (and has the paint panel on both ends) so that the trainset can be broken in two and one set turned around without ending up with two standard couplers next to each other. There have been incidents where someone was paying no attention and attempted to dump with one end of the car mated to the next with two standard couplers, damaging the dumper and the car. But that is a rare occurence.
Railway Man jeaton I have watched 100 car trains of standard 100 ton hopper cars manually unloaded in less than three hours. Road engines spot the cars and a half dozen car knockers get the doors. Nice work on a hot summer day. That's impressive. I wonder if anyone would even dream of doing that today. Mention "manual doors" to a power plant now and they look at you in abject horror and start talking about injuries. RWM
jeaton I have watched 100 car trains of standard 100 ton hopper cars manually unloaded in less than three hours. Road engines spot the cars and a half dozen car knockers get the doors. Nice work on a hot summer day.
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Murphy Siding Railway Man jeaton I have watched 100 car trains of standard 100 ton hopper cars manually unloaded in less than three hours. Road engines spot the cars and a half dozen car knockers get the doors. Nice work on a hot summer day. That's impressive. I wonder if anyone would even dream of doing that today. Mention "manual doors" to a power plant now and they look at you in abject horror and start talking about injuries. RWM Is it actually manually unloaded, as in, guys turning a wheel by hand? Or is it more of guys atatching some sort of power equipment, like an impact wrench, and squeezing the trigger?
More like muscles and crowbars to knock open the latches on the hopper doors and close the doors after the car is empty.
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