I thought coal always traveled in hoppers. But now I often see in magazines that coal-carrying cars are tagged as gondolas.
Is this because those cars are rotated to be dumped? And if there are no dump chutes on the bottom, it’s not called a hopper?
To me gondola always meant the classic lower-profile solid-bottom gondola used for srcrap metal, etc. Period.
There are a variety of gondola designs with distinctive features such as solid bottoms, fish belly sides, drop ends, covered gondolas, and bottom dump outside of rails, which is referred to as the class GS. Historically, solid bottom gondolas were used to haul coal which was unloaded by hand shovel labor. There was also a lot of use of power clamshell buckets to unload open solid bottom gondolas.
https://mrr.trains.com/-/media/import/files/pdf/7/5/f/transition-era_gondolas.pdf
Everthing shown in that article would fit my definition of a gondola.
But I sometimes see the cars in unit coal trains referred to in Trains as gondolas.
A hopper car, as noted, is named because it has hoppers at the bottom for discharge.
A gondola, of course, is a Venetian boat; the railroad car is named for its shape.
By design. I’m sure you’ll often find that such gons have markings to show where the rotary coupler is - generally the last panel or two on each side is painted.
I’m confused. Isn’t it fairly obvious where a freight car’s coupler is … ?
[*-)]
Yes, but not whether that coupler is equipped to rotate to allow turning the car upside-down!
There are some amusing pictures of what happens when non-rotary couplers are used in conjunction with rotary unloaders … some of them involving locomotives. (Bob Smith knows some that are more-than-usually cringeworthy…)
The Wikipedia article may help you sort it out.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotary_car_dumper
Here’s an image of such cars with the end panel marked as noted.
Generally speaking, you’ll find these cars in unit trains. While it’s possible that the cars will be uncoupled and dumped individually, for best efficiency, they’ll stay coupled and be dumped, one or possibly two at a time, while coupled in the train.
Thus it’s important that the dump operator knows he/she has rotary couplers in the appropriate positions.
If you see such a train, you’ll usually see all of the marked panels facing the same way on all of the cars…
Hoppers have bottom doors. Gondolas do not.
Most modern hoppers also have rotary couplers, and our coal trains contain a mix of both types. The bottom doors are a nuisance, they are never used out here, except for when they open by accident and cause a spill.
I kicked an empty a little too hard one time and all the doors flew open when it hit. Then I looked at the list and realized those cars have a “Do Not Hump, Kick, Or Drop Switch” order on them. Oops. So over to the RIP track it went, must have come in that way, I don’t know how it happened [:-^].
Here is what can happen if a solid drawbar is coupled to a unit and the dumper operator doesn’t notice. Note that the units have different numbers, so this happened at least twice. The red marker is lit on 8022, so it must have been a DP remote on the tail end of the train:
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_5UNt9AzG_KE/S6ZH43g2axI/AAAAAAAAAgo/dsVPP2c5zyc/s1600/photo.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--8GxjP50DQw/Txxj9FnQr1I/AAAAAAAAA5M/scPxcRIaZ-A/s1600/rb3.jpg
While rare, this can happen from slack action if two rotary drawbars are coupled together. I’ve never had to deal with this myself, but I’ve heard it’s not fun:
https://www.railpictures.net/photo/438302/
Also, there are a few special cars with rotary drawbars at both ends. Each trainset is supposed to have one in the proper position, either at one end or between the two directions of stripes. Additional double rotaries may be needed if there are mid-train DP remotes.
I’ve spent many long days and nights switching out coal trains in order to get the cars facing the right way.
Not entirely true. There’s always the “drop bottom gondola…”
How many are left in service now?
I’ve always thought of them as “Hart cars”, after the manufacturer. We actually have an old wood sided one in our collection, though it is unrestored and may never be.
Probably all in museums.
Mostly jerking your chain…
.
On that picture of 8017 convenient place to hang an MU cable.
Or shovels or switch brooms.
Better than leaving it plugged in to the real plug on one end of the consist, if the cable has been damaged inside it can cause some interesting and unusual problems.
Our SD70M-2’s didn’t originally come with dual dummy plugs, which explains why the cable is up there. A lot of the Dash-9’s and ES44DC’s have them almost too far apart for the cable to reach them both.
I didn’t realize that most rotary/dump cars have a rotary coupler on only one end. Makes sense. I never thought about that.
Also, their air hoses are on the same side at both ends of the car and they have longer hoses, so they can reach around the drawbar without parting when the car is being dumped.
Some car designs have the air hoses mounted in such a way that they are almost impossible to couple together under the drawbars if a car is facing the wrong way. Short hose extentions (about 8’’ of hose with gladhands on both ends) exist for this sort of situation.
Back in the days when I was working at Bayview (gateway to Behtlehem Steel @ Sparrows Point) it seemed that the B&O had mastered the ‘no bottom’ gondola - cars where the wood floor had been destroyed leaving only the centerbeam and the cross stringers of steel left within the steel sides and ends of the car. The lack of a floor actually aided the shipper as the light weight of the cars included the weight of the floor - shippers could then ship that much product for free.
The Bando version of “it’s not a bug, it’s a feature!”
This won’t add much to the conversatiion about modern equipment, but back in the days (generally pre-World War II) there were many types of gondolas with floor openings of various designs, including hoppers. I think in those days the distinction was the self-clearing property of the car–slope sheets that aided the unloading. Most of those types disappeared soon after the War–the GS cars stuck around for a couple more decades.
The C&O used to call everything gondolas. They were either “flat-bottoms” or “hopper-bottoms”. I remember being taken aback when hearing an old head talk about some “flat-bottoms” they were getting, and this was in the 1970s.
Rotary couplers: pretty much beaten to death by previous posters, but nobody that I saw mentioned that hoppers can also have them. Gives them a lot more versatility as to where they can be unloaded. In fact, the photo of the cars with the pair of rotary couplers twisted sideways was showing hoppers. (How do I know? That extra air hose for charging and actuating the unloading mechanisms.)
And if you want your gondolas to have flat bottoms only, just stay tuned…I don’t think any new coal cars have been ordered in over a decade.
Another fun fact: nearly all modern rotary-dump coal cars–be they hopper or gondola–have the same outside length: 53 feet 1 inch. That’s because rotary dumpers are fairly standard, too. If you’re looking at cars that have drastically been rebuilt from old cars–for ties, ballast, or whatever else–check that dimension in an Equipment Register or on