Problem solved

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Sometime ago I posted a question concerning adding an incline
leading to a coal dock on a layout design I was working on. Those who
replied showed some concern that an incline in a small space would be
way to steep o/o wise. I messed with it and found that to be true.

I
then started looking into back issues of MR How to build Realistic
Layouts and a couple of train books from the library. What I came up
with is this- the coal is dumped into a pit and carried to the coal
tower by way of a conveyor. The dumptruck pulls under the tower and
gets its load. Now it fits in my layout design. Bob

2

I recall watching this freight movie at a railfan club, a hopper car was pushed up to an unloading bin and unloaded somehow, pushed, not by a locomotive, but some inbetween the rails pusher apparatis. After emptying, the car was gravitied down and ran thru retarders then to a collecting yard.

I toyed with hump yards and seen examples of minor gravity yards in HO, I found I would just rather loco switch the cars around, as cool and neet that could be.

I tried the idea of moving real coal, but the possible messes that could be made from that says, uhm, no more vacuuming!!!