Someone once told me, in order to speed up loading of ship’s, some docks and companies pick up the railcars off the track and dump the cargo into the hold. Is this true? Do rail companies allow for such handling of cars? Is it only certain cargo that this can be done?
TIM A
What actually happens is that the railcar is rotated in a rotary dumper, the material(coal) spills out onto conveyor belts, which empty into the ships hold.
Up here on the great lakes the coal docks are almost a cross between the two ideas. In this method of unloading a locomotive with spacer flatcars in between pushes a coal hopper up on an elevated dock. From there the car is clamped down and the car is tipped over to dump the coal is what looks like a big diagonal half of a funnel which directs the dumped coal into the hold of a bulk freighter. You can check out these links to give you a visual idea of how it works.
http://www.boatnerd.com/news/newpictures01/c.l.austin-jh-pg.jpg
http://www.boatnerd.com/news/newpictures02/ebbarber-6-7-02-jh-pg.jpg
http://www.coopertsmith.com/services/index_details_36.cfm