I have been busy with a couple of BLI hoppers to supply my power station, and I wanted to represent fulls going in and empties coming out - so here’s how I put my BLI hoppers to work.
The steam switcher pushes the full hoppers into the power station
The loads are then removed from a slot in the back of ther building using a steel implement - in this case a small screwdriver - out of sight of the viewer.
There is a captive magnet beneath the coal load. I had to file a lot of plastic from the sides of the coal to get a sloppy fit into the hopper
The empty hoppers are then pulled back out of the power station ready to be taken away for the next load.
Jon
I think that is really cool. How long does do the cars stay in the building before being extracted? How long would this take in real life?
And my comment - do any observers actually notice? I operate on a couple layouts that have loads-in empties-out power plant / mine set ups but no one (observers) ever notices or comments on it. It’s tons of extra (unprototypical) effort for the operators though.
I like the magnet idea.
P.S. WOW!! nice layout pics, that looks like Magazine quality work to me.
submit some of those pics to MR.
bill
Thats some lovely weathering on them expensive hoppers. From the caliber of your other work, this shouldn’t come as a suprise.
And yeah, that looks better than alot of stuff seen in MR. You should submit somthing if you can.
I saw some something at Trainfest that I thought was really cool. The loads were upside down until it went under the loader. It had a magnet or something that pulled a lever and turned the loads right side up.