I saw that Walthers is releasing a new working Rotary Dumper and I was thinking of adding this to my layout set in the late 1950s. Would this have been too early for a Rotary Dumper? When did they come into use?
Why not do a Google search? Or on Wikipedia? You can do it yourself.
Perhaps someone here has some immediate or useful info.
I suppose the same could be said for just about any question asked here.
It was nothing like the modern ones, but the Denver & Rio Grande had a primitive rotary dumper to transfer loads from narrow gauge to standard gauge gondolas that was built in the latter part of the 1800’s.
This site has a pic of one around 1920
http://www.ohiohistory.org/etcetera/exhibits/ohiopix/image.cfm?ID=5424
I already have. Google brings up nothing that is helpful. The entry in Wikipedia is a stub that says nothing about when they were introduced. Maybe next time you can give people the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming they’re lazy or stupid. In return I’ll try not to assume you’re a jerk.
I, for one, appreciate these kinds of questions. It’s an interesting topic that I probably wouldn’t have taken the time to research myself. However, since it’s now drawn some attention, it’s fun to see what kinds of historical facts and photos come up.
I’m modelling coal operations in the 1960’s, but I’m using bottom-drop hoppers.
If Walthers is making a working rotary dumper, does that mean someone is also making rotary-joint couplers for those cars?
Sergent produces the rotary couplers in HO.
Edit: I guess a link would help…
http://www.sergentengineering.com/
…or maybe I could tell you to go find it yourself.[:)]
No need for assumption, whitman. He’s a jerk. A very knowledgable jerk, and a VERY good modeling jerk, but a jerk.
I’ve got photos of 40’ single sheathed boxcars in rotary dumpers at LARGE flour mills from the late 1930s. It’s not quite what you had in mind, but it’s pretty close.
And from the 1940s, there are photos of rotary dumpers in coal service, at large rail to barge transshipment points on the great lakes. Those photos are buried somewhere in the huge Library of Congress photo site (and they’re in color!). Those might be more of what you’re looking for.
Thanks. This is a helpful data point. In searching around some of the old posts on this subject, I saw that someone was trying to model a rotary dumper at Lambert’s Point in Baltimore in 1950 which is consistent with your data. There seems to be enough plausible information for me to go buy the kit.
Thats earlier then I would have guessed, though this looks to be a slightly different design.
Here’s another bit of information. The 1960s are a rough dividing line. Before that time, rotary car dumpers tended to be located only at very large facilities, like ocean shipping terminals for coal. The cars used tended to be bottom dump capable. The rotary dumping methods simply speeded up unloading. The cars used conventional couplers and were dumped individually wihile broken apart from the train.
The mention of car dumpers in grain service is more likely referring to a car tipper. These were used in the days before the grain trade went almost exclusively to covered hoppers. Boxcars would have grain doors inserted to span the door opening. At the receiving elevator, a variety of methods were used to help speed unloading through the side door once the grain door was broken open. The most efficient of these was the car tipper, which clamped the boxcar, tipped it to one side then fore and aft, in order to literally pour the last of the grain out of the car. Typically, these would only be seen at larger elevators. Smaller elevators used cable plows and good 'ol shovels to get the last of the grain out. Covered hoppers put an end to these less efficient practices and to grain being hauled in boxcars, except on trackage too light or undermaintained to handle loaded grain hoppers.
In the 1960s, several things changed for rotary dumping technology. The installations spread much mare widely and became far more compact. The typical power plant, instead of using bottom unloading cars over pits spanned by tracks began using rotary dumpers. The cars increasingly tended to be gons, with no provision for bottom dumping. Although you can still see many conventional hoppers in service, they are a much smaller percentage of the fleet hauling coal, etc than they used to be. And these new coal cars/gons tend to have rotary couplers, so that there is no need to uncouple individual cars as they go through the dumper, further expediting unloading.
So the key thing to
Immediate thought before opening the thread was that I’ve seen a book which suggested that Roman miners used trams on wood rails that were tipped by semi rotary tippers… but these were end-on tippers.
While reading the erudite suggestions that one should turn to Wikepedia or Google (I’ve been given that really useful advice a couple of times) it occured to me that the book suggested something similar having been developed in Northern Germany in the Middle Ages.
So you don’t need to worry about being too early! [:D]
I like the additional stuff about grain cars. Just to top up on this… use of covered hoppers accelerated when they sorted out the top hatch seals to keep the load dry. (PS I’m not saying that they are “sealed” just that they can keep enough water out).
Am I correct in thinking that some woodchip cars were built to end dump?
PS Early dumps tended to lift and dump the cars individuallybut (if it’s the Walthers model I think it is) later dumps seem to keep the cars at track level and rotate them along the axis of the draft gear. The question would seem to be why this wasn’t adopted earlier? I’m pretty certain that I’ve seen the more modern type of dumpers built to rotate two cars at once.
I imagine that pretty much everyone is aware that cars with rotary couplers usually have the rotary coupler end of the car distinctly marked - usually with a block of colour all round the car end. This gives the dump operator a clear indicator that cars are marshalled the right way round and don’t need to be uncoupled before dumping. getting the couplers wrong would be a bit disastrous!
I saw the individual car dumpers in the 1950’s, on the N&W at Lambert’s Point (which is in Norfolk, VA) and on the Virginian at Sewell’s Point also in Norfolk. I used to watch Lambert’s Point from my bedroom thru a telescope. The C&O, right across Hampton Roads, may have had them too, but I didn’t see theirs in service.
Chip car rotary dumpers, that worked with regular dumper bottom cars, were definitely in service thru the 1970’s, because I worked in a mill with one.
Virginian,
Yes, good point, wood chips are a factor also. Many of the early woodchip cars were converted boxcars. Cut the roof off, maybe add some extensions to get more chips in the car, weld the side doors shut, then run it through a rotary dumper to empty it. Same era issues for use of rotary couplers apply.
The end dump cars for chips that were mentioned further up were much less common. They’re a lot more trouble to switch, so the gains in productivity are less. I suspect that an end dump application was probably less expensive to install, so a smaller customer or one in a tight urban area, which are few and far between I’d bet, might have one of these, instead of a rotary dump. No need for a rotary coupler on an end dump, of course.
Rotary dumping those chip cars must have taken a huge dumper (size wise) but I guess that the load was lighter. Were the car ends marked for the rotary coupler?
Am I right in thinking that LBF made some of the end tippers? I’ve managed to find a couple of Walthers hopper type cars for a small works in town (since I learnt that they did happen)… going to cut the corner off a building to get the clearance for the long cars’ middle-of-side.
Does anyone have dates for carved up boxcars and/or the switch to purpose built cars please? Come to that… were they RR or private cars and did they get a full repaint?
(Er… hope no-one minds me going a bit off-topic [:I])
Pics on all of these please anyone???
TIA
[8D]
Then again… weren’t some of the woodchip cars emptied by vacuum pipes???
(Typical car buying scenario… for months I kept finding nothing but titanium Dioxide tank cars and thinking “What on earth was that for”? Then I learnt a bit about paper making and… do you think I can find one or a china clay tank car anywhere??? [banghead] Never mind… it will give my piggy bank time to recover from a couple of great RS27s [8D]).
Oh yes… and a lot if not all of the covered hoppers are stencilled with instrucions to open hatches before unloading so while not “sealed” the hatches must be capable of forming a seal with the body in normal use. I’ve seen pics of tank cars that have collapsed inwards when not vented while unloading but not covered hoppers… anyone seen this??? [8D]
I have never seen a rotary coupler on a chip car. A rotary dumper for dumping cars that remain coupled utilizing rotary couplers is MUCH larger, and therefore I am sure more expensive. Also, with a separate one car at a time system the load is pretty much centered, loaded and empty, so it only takes a relatively small motor to operate the rotary function. A 2000 ton a day pulp mill is a big one, so one would not need to dump that many cars a day, even if 100% of their supply was by rail.
The old N&W coal dock was a cool operation. One car would be uncoupled from the string, and then roll down by gravity, and then be lifted/rolled up on an elevated track like a roller coaster works. From any distance the whole thing looked like a huge black roller coaster. At the top the car would then roll downhill on a gradual grade out onto the coal pier and be switched to whichever rotary dumper was scheduled, dump, and then be released to roll back downhill in the direction it came from off the dock, and back into the yard where it would couple onto a train of empties being made up for another run to the mountains. Those car braking systems coming off that pier had to take a heck of a beating.
Railphotog wrote: < Why not do a Google search? Or on Wikipedia? > Wikipedia? Maybe he wants an answer that is credible and /or useful? As for the timeframe for rotary dumpers, the Virginian Railway “battleship” gondolas date from the mid-1920s, and were designed to be unloaded in a rotary dumper, so they were presumably in service then. Cheers, Mark.
I can just see the “new guy” the first time he sees that tipper in action -
“Boss! That thing over there just ate a gon!”