When humping cars, what types or cars or car commodities are not allowed over the hump?
Lol who is doing the humping and where lol. LOTS of stuff goes over humps that should not.
Some restricted cars can include auto racks, intermodal cars, certain dangerous goods cars, loaded flat cars with equipement tied down or shiftable loads, dimensional traffic and other special cars are just some to name a few.
I am redoing my model railroad in N scale. It will have an operating hump yard. I have been working on my operating rules and would like to make sure I cover hump operations. The current rule reads:
2.2 Hump Switching Of Cars
Cars of the following types are prohibited from being switched over the hump.
Cars requiring the use of two or more carrying cars separated by idler car(s)
Helium tank cars
All cars used in intermodal service.
Loaded auto racks.
&n
Why helium, and the residue cars?
There is no flat yard switching restrictions for them so why at a hump?
Ed
That is a cool idea to model an operating hump yard. You don’t see it done much. I’ve thought of it many times myself.
I’ve seen almost anything “go over” the hump including passenger trains with passengers and dimensional loads with buffer cars, double stack cars, and low floor flat cars that scrape the rail at the crest of the hump. Keep in mind that not everything that goes over is alowed to role freely down into the bowl tracks, some cars need to be shoved to rest, other cars can only role one at a time and you stop and wait till it clears before the next car goes. I watch the hump yard alot and I beleive though that a good flat switching crew with a well layed out yard could probably sort more cars in a shift. But hump yards are interesting.
Good luck with your model hump yard.
OK I’ve never seen hot metal cars go over the hump, but everything else I can think of has been humped.
If loaded hot metal cars were sent over the hump, I don’t think that I would want to be in the bowl below. That could get very messy.
CC
I’m sure that if the hot-metal cars ever had occasion to come our way, we’d utter a “WTF” and put them over.
As has been said, just about everything can go over the hump, as long as it clears the retarders. There are some cars that we give a little extra attention to, and a very few that aren’t detached from power, or a few more that are cut off and then held in one of the retarders (as a non-automated hump yard, we can do that!). The problems come more from bypassed couplers in the bowl than they do from overspeed impacts.
Humping cars is how I make my living.
Story told in England, whne the LMS introduced Beyer-Garatts. They were intended to be used on long coal trains, replacing 2 0-6-0s.
The detination for the trains was the hump yard at Toton. With the 0-6-0s, the procedure had been that the train would be pushed over the hump by the power for the following train, which would follow the cars over the hump and out a loco track. The first time they ran a B-G, the did the same, but there was a sharp bend at the top of the hump. Things stopped quickly when the drivers from the rear engine came up through the cab floor.