It just looks like the coal chute is off center to me, might be the angle of the camera though. Interesting they set the brakes on a few cars and then pull with the brakes applied to stabilize the train:
Not knowing exactly where the scale is in the operation - it appears that several hundred pounds per car are missing the real dumping chute and falling into the car.
I suspect this facility uses their scale numbers for the official weight based on ‘shippers load and count’. The scales will be tested periodically to ensure their accuracy for both the shipper and the carrier.
Back in the day, many loadouts did not have scales and the cars had to be weighed at the ‘marshalling yard’ where the various grades of coal got switched into trains - not all coal is the same - each coal seam has different metallurgical properties and users of coal have their facilities ‘tuned’ to utilize coal of specific properties.
At the point in time I was working, each transhipper had multiple grades of coal that were to be mixed in a specific order when being dumped and loaded on to the vessel. The ocean motion of the vessels in their trips to destination would homogenize the coal in the holds.
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I saw that as well. Falling alongside the chute vs through it…Oy! So the digital meter they were looking at was not all that accurate either.
Free coal cargo?
We’ve got 27 fresh inches of snow they can have.