I am in the process of trying to plan and design a working model of the coal railroad my father worked at for 25 years in WV, The hopper cars were pulled one at a time into the river tipple and and the clam shell doors were opened.
As the tipple was a dead-end I am trying to come up with a good way to actually have the hopper cars dump.
The options I have saw in this post may work but does anyone else have any ideas?
FYI the coal train was KCNW (Kelly’s Creek & Northwestern) it came ouf ot the mines in Mammoth, WV and dumped into barges on the Kanawha River 8 miles away from the mine site.
You typed, “INTO the tipple.” Am I correct in assuming that the cars were inside some kind of structure?
If so, you can design and use a rotary dumper, hidden inside the tipple, to unload the loose loads. Since it can be completely hidden it doesn’t have to be a scale model of anything - just something that will tightly enclose your standard hopper car and allow it to be rotated through 180 degrees with the axis passing through the center of the car’s vertical dimension. I will leave the detailed design as an exercise for the student.
The alternatives are:
Find some of the ancient Mantua bottom-dump hoppers. The hopper bottoms weren’t typical of the hoppers I’ve seen - more like clamshell buckets.
Get VERY inventive with the (currently fixed) hopper doors of commercially available hoppers.
Scratch build cars exactly like the prototype’s, including operating doors.
Rig the inside of the tipple to remove fixed dummy loads - electromagnet, anyone?
I gave serious consideration to this sort of thing, then decided to substitute an Empties in/loads out arrangement (at the loading end of the coal movement) and some dedicated hidden track in the netherworld to return the loaded cars to the mine and get the empty cars back from their virtual destination. The few cars live loaded (with used pool charcoal) are routed to a cassette rigged for easy emptying.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - including collieries that weren’t there)
If you are talking about HO scale, in addition to the Mantua hoppers Revell had an operating hopper car. Back around 1958 or so Ulrich Model Kits came out with an operating 3-pocket hopper car. The doors were held closed by spring pressure and would open when the car was pushed in either direction against a tab sticking up in the center of the track. IIRC they were die-cast metal cars and nicely detailed for the time and worked very well.
This is one of the Mantua hoppers with the operating clamshell doors.
There’s an actuator on the track, between the rails. You can see it under the left end of the car. It’s just a mechanical piece that spreads the doors as the hopper passes over, dumping the coal through the track into the pile below.
It’s Sunday night, and there are a couple of them on eBay right now. The B&M one is the type with the operating doors.
Thanks all for your ideas and suggestions on this.
I am going to try and plan out the layout and its mechnisms soon so we will see what happens. As my dad will be turning 71 next month. I am really excited to get this dream of his come to life. The mine was closed in 1993 after it was sold off by Quaker State, the two EMD MP1500’s (purchased in the 80’s) were sold to Alaska Rail where they have been retired from there. They were sent to Seattle, WA for rework, one is now in in use again in the upper part of the Eastern US. (KCNW #1, ARR #1553). Last Dad had KCNW #2 ARR #1554 was still being reworked in Seattle. the 180 100 Ton coal hoppers were sold to Flordia Light and Power. All of the tracks river tipple, wash plant and loadout were tore down and the mine shafts blasted closed. Within the last 4 years someone has reopened the mine. This to me is more than a hobby it is keeping alive a memory that feed our family for many years.
