As i start on making my own coal loads for my 34 foot hoppers, I am wondering how high the top of a coal carload shoild rise above the sides along the center of the load? Modeling in the transition era, was there a loading process that resulted in regular load profiles? I recall seeing a PRR business ad from 1953 that showed virtually identical load profiles among a large yard full of cars, although that was a commercial art drawing. Cedarwoodron
I’d say having the loads “start” about a foot or so below the tops, and rise to a foot or so above the tops. Nowadays, it seems shippers load the cars as full as possible, one hard coupling might run the risk of some spilled coal.
Brad
Ron,
Your observatuions are good. Depending on the type of coal, the ‘heap’ may stay high for the entire transit to the consignee. Most of the time, the coal levels out in transit and is a nice rounded heap.
Current western Powder River Basin coal is quite fine, and really settles out as the train is in motion. Myself, I have lots of transition era 34’ twin bay hoppers with commercial coal loads. They vary from 2 to 3 heaps.
Jim
I was impressed w/ loads from Motrak Models, may be a bit biased as Jeff (owner) was a club member.
He does quite a bit of research before putting any of them into production. Commercial loads may not suit most modelers needs, especially at the cost where you may need 4-5 dozen or so. This pic gives a good representation of the loads you are looking for.
These are his early hydrocal base molds w/ Black Beauty sandblast grit. Newer ones are resin.
I don’t know if you have a method of construction in mind, There are many methods used to build them Some cut out foam to size/ shape and glue the coal after a quick coat of acrylic black. This would be my perfered way to do this, foam is cheap, easy to cut and shape and only a small amount of the expensive scenery product is needed to coat the load. You can also glue a steel plate to the bottom. This will add additional weight to the load and make it easy to remove from the hopper w/ a magnet so no ned to actually overturn the car to shake out the load.
Depth of a coal load was partially dependent on the distance that particular load had traveled. Coming out of the loadout it might seem that the heap was about to spill. Several hundred miles down the road it might be barely visible, having shaken out all the voids in the mass.
Modern flood loaders, which pour coal into moving cars, leave a whole train looking pretty uniform. However, they are 'way too recent to be loading 34 foot cars. The kind of tipple or truck dump used in that earlier era would leave heaps - the exact location dependent on how the car was loaded.
Not U.S. practice, but I once watched a colliery loading crew carefully trimming coal that had been heap-dumped into cars. They were using a template which, I presume, approximated the coal’s angle of repose. At that time, in that place, cultural forces kept people employed far beyond the point where U.S. companies would have laid off the surplus workers. (That mine was all but played out, but the crew was just as big as when it had loaded ten times as many carloads daily.)
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with carefully trimmed coal loads)
I think some of it has to do with the era you’re modeling. If you look at pictures of 40s-60s era coal loads, they tended to look like two rounded humps. While modern coal loads are shaped by the loader; kind of flat on top with tapered sides and ends.