I have recently been going through GMR 2005 in detail, and am wondering about the coal dock on the MVRR.
From the looks of the track plan on page 98, there appears to be room for only two, maybe three cars, the locomotive and tender to be able to get on to the coal dock via the switchback.
In addition it appears that it is practical to pull coal cars from only one yard track to take up the coal dock.
Does anyone have any further information or comments?
Thank you
I’m probably getting cross-eyed in my old age - but would you double check your location info?? [%-)] I don’t recognise the name Muscoot Valley, and Pg. 98 as listed is the last page of the special, and has photos and articles of an outdoor Sandy Ridge & Clear Lake.
Hi Randy;
I do not see Sandy Ridge & Clear Lake in “Great Model Railroads 2005”. The SR&CL is on page 98 of “Model Railroad Planning 2005”.
The owner of the Muscoot Valley is a personal friend and I had the privilege of being among the group of guys who contributed to some of the work on the MVRR for 10 years when I was living in NY. The coal dock is the most impressive structure on the layout. The coal chutes are fully operable and raise and lower by an electric motor hidden in the dock body with sewing thread “cables” attached to their ends. Coal hoppers are shoved up the long trestle to the final, level portion of the dock where, one-by-one, they are pushed forward until their special drop-bottom doors engage a wedge-shaped metal casting located in the middle of the track. It pushes the doors open and allows the car’s load of coal to drop downwards into two large, box-shaped holding reservoirs that feed the loading chutes. A vibrator located within the coal dock then agitates the coal to drop into the chutes from the reservoirs, filling two coal barges that are lashed to the dock. The empty hopper is then nudged further forward until gravity rolls it down a sharply-declined kickback track where it gathers speed, rolls through a spring-switch at the bottom, rolls upward, and then rolls down again through the now-self-thrown spring switch and classifies itself into a receiving yard located on the land side of the dock. The entire process is an amazing feat of model RR engineering that has to be seen to be appreciated. The structure replicates the coal docks that used to be located on the west side of Lower New York Harbor.
When I first saw this contraption, I was thunderstruck at the ingenuity involved in building it. However, John wasn’t satisfied with the speed at which the empty hoppers entered the receving yard after rolling down the ramp and asked his friends to figure out a way to slow them down to a more realistic, slower speed. The first thing they tried was to install dark-painted (so they would be less visible) short pieces of heavy monofilament fish