I have been sitting here debating if I have a real question or if I am just missing something obvious.
Push-Pull gave me a thought - I see all kinds of coal trains with (forgive me Mark) MU’s? (I am tired and can’t seem to remember my terms)
So if a coal train goes east to a power plant, can or do they keep the engines with the cars, dump the cars and send it back with the trailing unit now the HEP?
I am just sure there is a big elephant sitting right in front of me and I am missing something. Just can’t see around the elephant!
Do the locomotives pass through the rotary too (I know they don’t rotate the locomotives, but wouldn’t at one end or the other there not be a rotary coupler?)? I’ve seen the loading, but not the unloading of these trains.
I live by a deep-sea port where they dump numerous coal trains a day.
The trains just run around a Balloon track while going through the dumpers and the unit on the head end stays as the unit on the head end and the unit on the tail end stays as the unit on the tail end.
The funny part is, for whatever reason around here, the unit on the tail end always seems to be the one with air conditioning.
It’s a little different than the push-pull of commuter trains. With the commuter trains there is only ONE locomotive and it stays on the same end all the time.
When the train goes one way the locomotive pulls the train and the engineer rides in the front in the locomotive, when the train then starts the other way the engineer rides in (what used to be the last car) in a control cab, and the locomotive is on the other end pushing the train.
Basically the control cab is just a little desk in the last car that controls the locomotive on the other end of the train, making the locomotive run in reverse and pu***he train.
In the case of the unit trains with a unit on the trail and the head end, there is always a locmotive on both ends.
Depends on the dumper (there are lots of different kinds out there).
The one near my place there are two dumpers at the deep sea port that are both for unloading coal, and the locomotives just drive right through the dumper and the first car is spotted so it can be rotated.
There is another dumper down in Vancouver that is used for sulpher, and units CANNOT drive through the dumper, because it was not built to support that kind of weight, so the trains are backed into the dumper and then the units cut off, then the dumper pulls the train through with it’s own power.
The power passes through the dumpers here. The trains I have observed have one car somewhere in the train that has rotary couplers on both ends. The cars behind the dual coupler car are turned in the opposite direction of those in front. Thus there is always a rotary coupler in the correct postion so every car can be dumped.
Macguy:
The Roberts Bank Superport in Vancouver is certainly impressive to behold! I’d heard that it has pretty much reached it’s designed capacity. Are the Port officials and the B.C. provincial government under Gordon Campbell planning to use landfill to further expand the size and capacity of the port out to sea, or are they intending for the proposed expansion of the Port of Prince Rupert to take the pressure off of Rober
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QUOTE: Originally posted by rossrobertmoorejr
Macguy:
The Roberts Bank Superport in Vancouver is certainly impressive to behold! I’d heard that it has pretty much reached it’s designed capacity. Are the Port officials and the B.C. provincial government under Gordon Campbell planning to use landfill to further expand the size and capacity of the port out to sea, or are they intending for the proposed