I’m new to model railroading.Just joined a model railroad club in Grand Junction Colorado’‘Grand Valley Model Railroad Club’‘.It’s great they are just starting to build a new layout from the ground up so I will be able to learn all the in’s and out’s of model railroading.
I want to build a layout that is 2 4x8 sheets of plywood in a L pattern.
I bought 3d railroad concept and design and have made a layout that already has about 100’ of track and that is just around the parimater and a freight yard turn table round house and alot of siding track.
My question is about rotary railcar dumper.I have seen plans for one on the internet.Do any of you guy’s have one and did you make it or did you buy it.It lo
oks pretty compuclated lots of motors and belts and magnets.
What I would like is to have a working coal layout ‘‘A rotary railcar dumper that goes to a covaer that goes to a tipple that dumps into a hopper car.’’ is tis to much for a frist timer.I have a lot of skills in carpentry and building and I know the guy’s at the club will help if I get stuck. Thanks Barent.
Walthers made a rotary car dumper a couple of years ago, but is not available from them at this time. If you look at a well stocked LHS, you might be able to find one. I know it’s a long drive, but you might try Caboose Hobbies the next time you get to Denver, or check their web site. Also, I think All Aboard Model Railroad Emporium In Torrance had one the last time I was in. You can check their web site too.
Bob Hayes
IIRC, I saw one of these last week when I was at The Inside Gateway in Bellevue, WA. You can contact them from their website (http://www.theinsidegateway.com/), and I think they’re willing to ship.
From what I recall this unit did not function very well. Just like most of Walthers operating equipment, the idea is great but the resulting models don’t seem to have been engineered to be able to work properly. I visited an area club several years ago and they had one installed, was told it didn’t work as advertized.
I’d do some additional checking before committing to one. They are no longer in production for some reason - they stink!
Check old MR in the index, and get the MR staff to forward you a copy of an article on how to build a working dumper as published in the '50’s I think. Also, their old Bridges & Buildings book compiled the article. Watch at swap meets. It used a geared down DC motor, spring loaded car retainers, and a piano hinge to “dump” - ostensibly into a barage. I was inspired, but never built such a rig.
Well, as I remember, the kit is advertised as being positionable and a good base for an operating kit. Actually, I had been planning something like this for a long time but then decided that it would take too much time because I will be graduating from High School in a little over a year and moving a little farther from home, making working on the current layout a little more difficult. Because of this I decided to go the simple route and not have everything work. I will, however share what I had in mind.
Well, for the coal tipple, there was a great article in the July 1999 MR about making one from some PVC, a windshield wiper motor, and a wood auger. This got some great ideas going in my head. My plan was to use solonoids to open a door that would dump the coal into the car, though the wood auger tipple is much more straight foreward. If this sounds interesting, I would highly recommend that you get a copy of that issue of MR.
For transferring the coal from the dumper to the tipple I was just going to move it by hand because, in my thoughts, the departure and arrival places would be far enough apart that it would be impractical to make some sort of conveyor belt.
The dumper part was going to be the Walthers Rotary Dumper kit modified so that it sipns freely. Then I was going to take a DC step motor with about a 1 degree step, maybe a little more. I was going to mount this motor beneath the layout and put a cog gear on the shaft. Then I was going to have a cog belt go around one of the big disks on the side of the dumper and around the gear. I was then going to have a step motor controller and thus ave precise control of the turn of the dumper so I could get the rails lined up again so that the car could be taken away without any problems. I was also going to add some little bars or something to keep the cog belt on the big disk. Inexpensive step motors are available from www.mpja.com and www.allelectronics.com. All Electronics also has some cog gears and cog belt
I read on the internet that a walthers operating coal dumper was possible. He took the kit and had to do some modifications to it. I am sorry but i can’t remember where I read that. Good Luck. I would like to know if you get it working.
I found the website I was talking about. It has the e mail address of the guy who made the dumper. I bet he would be glad to give you all the information you need. He also made rotary couplers to. (http://members.trainorders.com/pmack/dumper.htm)
In the July 1991 issue of MR starting on page 76, was an article entitled “From tipple to tidewater on the HO scale Chesapeake & Allegheny” which shows a coal tipple and rotary dumper, all nicely done on the Severna Park Model Railroad Club. It’s also on MR Video Layout Tour #4.
Bob Hayes
You don’t list an e-mail in your profile so I am posting this here. Sorry everyone else – Is this the club that was originally in a trailer and the Cross Orchards Musuem helped move them to a real building?
A freind of mine did a really nice job turning the Walthers kit into an operating dumper. He used about three different motors to control the rotation and car clamps and all. He also developed his own rotating couplers for the cars and was working on a device to accurately position the cars. His next project was to develope a working flood loader for a string of cars and last I heard he had it working pretty good. The guy is now employed as a model builder for a movie company somewhere in Oregon. Anyway my point is , a working dumper and loader is possible if your willing to spend the time playing with it. If you have good carpentry skills it shouldn’t be too difficult to do. There are plenty of gadgets and parts out there to accomplish the job.
Sergeant Engineering makes working rotary couplers. I know I saw an article on making one recently. I would have copied or bookmarked it but it was rather electronicaly complicated. I do remember that the gearmotors used to turn the dump were from discarded computer printers or CPU’s, and the system actually collected the dumped coal and returned it to a loader of some sort. [8D] I’m sure that someone else on this forum saw it & has a better memory than mine![D)] I already tried the forum search without luck - MR mag possibly? [%-)]
According to what I heard at Trainfest in Milwaukee, and confirmed by the Walthers website, they are planning to re-issue a rotary dumper in HO in 2007. The website lists it as a Cornerstone Series operating dumper - a bit pricey, but it’s coming. Link to web page:
All rotary dumpers are not equal (in the real world). Some do not require rotary couplers, because the cars are staged into them one at a time. The N&W pier at Lamberts Point used to have one of these (last time I looked was in the '50s), and I used to work for a mill that had one of these. I believe these are more common. The ones that utilize rotary couplers require that car lengths be uniform within a relatively narrow range if I remember correctly, and they are somewhat larger overall as the rotary axis is around the coupler, rather than the volumetric center.
