I saw this old veteran of the road sitting in the Colton, CA area and stopped to take it’s photo. I have never seen one of these side-dump cars in action and was wondering how it is operated. Does train line air supply the cylinders or are they hydraulic maybe? I seem to remember reading somewhere that these cars can tip over under certain circumstances but I can’t recall the specifics, anyone else know of this? This piece of rolling stock looks to have seen many years of use, it could probably tell some tales of the places it’s been and the things it has seen in it’s lifetime.
Gregory, I’d suspect that this “veteran” isn’t as old as you may think. Those things take a beating, given that their loads are usually jagged pieces of stone (anything from the size of ballast to riprap the size of small boulders) or dirt and sand that can aggravate the mechanical parts.
The cars are air-operated; they have a second line that is coupled to the engine’s air system when one gets to the unloading area. I’m not sure where the actuating lever is, but the operator has to be out of the way, I’d think, or able to move out easily. The air tips the body of the car, but the side (which ever one is at the bottom when the car unloads) is operated mechanically, I believe. It takes several seconds for the car to elevate to the full dumping position.
I’m not sure under what circumstances a car like this would tip off the track. They have a fairly high center of gravity, and that’s part of the reason their sides are so low.
Please consider all of this to be a “preliminary finding”, until some expert like Mudchicken weighs in (but trust me–there’s nobody like Mudchicken, and that is meant as a compliment!).
30 Cubic Yard DIFCO air dump (Now TRINITY, smaller of 2 types still built 30 and 33 CY versions)…MAGCOR used to make a version as well and those are ancient. Difco built its cars at Findlay, OH
Carl is right - these poor rascals are abused and the mechanical guys can’t keep them servicable. Ask any roadmaster, these things are a godsend to those that build and maintain the railroad infrastructure. When the railroads rationalized the air dump fleets, they made a major blunder that they have felt over and over again in crisis response efforts.
They have a second air system connected to those massive drum cylinders underneath that can be dumped using train air (not preferred because you risk dynamiting the brake system or bottling the air improperly) or dump it using the train main air reservoir through some of the locomotive MU air hoses or an air compressor.
They now make kits for air + hydraulic assist on the big air drums. (If the seal on the drums or triple valves leak you need a front end loader to help dump if you can at all)
If you don’t know what you’re doing, it’s real easy to derail one of these rascals with a heavy or wet load when the car gallops or gets way out of ballance (with mud, etc.)…
The risk of tipping over side dump cars is because - at least on some of them - the sides tilt down to a horizontal position to serve as an extension of the floor in the direction of the dumping, so as to help cast the load a little further out beyond the ends of the crossties and the track structure, as when building up an embankment.
Keep in mind, these were invented and first placed into service in “back in the day” before the widespread availablility of bulldozers and front-end loaders, when the further distribution of embankment materials was either by hand labor, a rail-mounted shovel, a Jordan spreader, etc., which just complicated the project even more, so this floor extension would have been a good thing.
However, now imagine when a heavy load - such as some huge boulders, or mud as the Mud Chicken mentioned above - hangs up and is sitting right at the outer edge of that side in the down position. In that position, the distance of that load outboard of the near rail is roughly the same as or maybe a little more than the distance inboard of the near rail to the center of gravity of the weight of the otherwise empty car - which weight is usually roughly the same or less than the load. The balance of the car is the result of the comparison/ difference between the product of each of those distances from the near rail times those weights - technically known as the “overturning moment” and “righting moment” (at least in nautical terms - “moment” in this sense means weight or force x distance as in lb.-ft. or kip-ft., not as in the moment in time when the car turns over). Since those products (moments) are often nearly equal - like a see-saw, or 2 people in a canoe - these cars tend to be tippy, and when they get out of balance the wrong way - either over she goes, or when the outer wheels are raised too far, at least slips off the inside of the near rail and down onto the tie
(You learn to keep caboose chains handy when dumping “the sticky stuff” and or monster rip rap and chain the main sill and the trucks to the rail opposite the side you are dumping.)
If you don’t, then sometimes the whole car rolls over (trucks and all) and just becomes a rather large, funny looking piece of rip-rap.[:-^][:-^][:-^]
Moving around these cars (or their predecessors) had to be fun when filling in some of those high trestles, as I’ve seen images of before. It’s not like they put ample walkways on those trestles in the first place.
Usually the operator stands on the side opposite the dumping. Gotta be careful, easy to pop the car out of the trucks, derail, etc. Usually the air dumps are near the engine (for main res air supply) and you would have the train stretched when dumping.
DMIR used a bunch of air dumps to haul limestone from the dock to a taconite plant.
Thanks for all the good information, now I know a little more about the equipment the railroads work with. Thats the good thing about the forum, theres always someone with the knowledge to answer your questions.
I agree that the car has probably been banged around quite a bit in it’s life, considering what work it does. I recently saw a short train of ballast cars here in Indianapolis and the cars were spankin’ new, not a scratch, dent, or smudge on them. Just think what our veteran would say to them…“good luck kid, your gonna need it, it’s a rough life out there!”
(2) slack action (preferably with the cars draped over a hill, you might want to bunch them up in a sag) train handling issue determined by local grade. (herky jerky = not good)
(3) If you have to braid the air to dump the car, you set an anchor to pull against while pulling the train away from the deadweight holding the edge of the car doors down.
