For the past few weeks NS has had a pair of cars that look like your typical open top hopper.(In big bold letters near the top left is says TOP GON.)But there appears to be no opening to extrude the contents! It doesn’t appear that they are caring anything. The only thing I can think of is that they at one time had rotary ends, and were used in coal or aggregate service, and are now used as MOW cars.[%-)]
Any ideas?
Justin
At one time, the NS’ Top Gons were your typical open-top hopper. NS rebuilt literally thousands of these cars from hoppers to solid-bottom gons during the 1990s. No rotary couplers either before or after the conversion–they were intended primarily for the car dumpers at either Norfolk or along Lake Erie (Sandusky?). I’m not sure that these worked out all that well (didn’t look like very sturdy floors), and I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them are stored, if not retired. Meanwhile, NS is going in for new aluminum gons (these were steel cars, by the way).
Carl,
If they didn’t have rotary ends, and no opening floor, how could a dumper unload them? What did they haul?
Justin
They are used primarily in the export coal trains, which go two at a time through the rotary dumper. There are still lots of them coming here to Norfolk. Here is a series of pictures of a pair being dumped, then coming out through a spring switch, up a ramp, then back through the switch the other way into the departure yard.
These pictures were taken last year during a harbor tour.
John
Nice pictures, John!
Justin, rotary dumpers predate rotary couplers by a good decade. The Tidewater docks of both NS and CSXT couldn’t handle solid trains due to their position on the land, and it probably wouldn’t be worth it to completely revamp these facilities for such operations.
The power plant near where I grew up was built with a rotary dumper that handled a single car at a time–the cars had to be shoved in one at a time, cut away from, allowed to dump, and pushed out by the next one. Rotary-coupler cars were in use by then (mid-60s), but were relatively novel. It took them another ten years before they got caught up with the times.
I’m sure the dumpers at the Tidewater docks are even older. Before that, they used large hoisting dumpers that lifted the cars up and tipped them to unload them (much like a garbage truck would empty a dumpster), then sent them down to the return ramp, as you see being done here. The rotary dumpers apparently replaced these.
If you want to go back even further, there were electric hopper cars that were filled with the contents of a couple of ordinary hopper cars, driven to a point where they were lifted up to dock level (which was high up, like the ore docks you may have seen photos of on Lake Superior), and dumped into the appropriate chutes.
I so want one of those ramps in my yard…
We still see plenty of “Top Gon” cars going through the Lynchburg area. Is it possible that the name was a clever take-off of the movie Top Gun ?
Oh I see! You sure can tell I’m really green aren’t I. When you said rotary dumper I thought you meant the it took one car still in the train and using the rotary ends, dumped it, and then took a hydraulic ram and shoved it out. I see now, just one or 2 at a time not coupled to anything. I saw a DVD that featured a dumper like this in the Chicagoland area. It just sends the cars down an embankment then they sail up a ramp, the switch throws and then gravity takes over by sending them down the ramp and on to a holding area I suppose.
I bet it would really suck if the switch malfunctioned, or froze up…. BAM!
What kind of mechanism holds the car in place while it’s roatary dumped?
A set of hydraulic clamps hold the car to the dumper mechanism. One big problem of this type dumping, knuckle pins that weren’t secured by a cotter key would dump out with the coal, if the knuckle was open, it might also follow the knuckle pin, if the knuckle was closed it would stay with the coupler and set a trap for the carman or switchman that next went to open the knuckle in the course of their duties. Many a foot has been injured with the knuckle falling on the unwary.
The only facilities with the kickback track and spring switch are on Lake Erie, they use a sidearm car pusher or a cable device to move the hoppers to the dumper. The only similar transfer facility in Chicago is Rail To Water Transfer at 100th Street and the Calumet River, which uses car shakers instead of a rotary dumper. All cars remain coupled and are pushed through the car shaker by a locomotive attached to the cut of cars.
You can still see trains with a solid consist of TopGons running on the former Waterlevel Route and Nickel Plate lines across Indiana. They seem to be getting rarer, though.
A decade! Carl, I know you’re just a young’un (like me), but rotary dumpers date to at least the 1910s. As far as I know, rotary couplers first appeared in the 1950s on some specialized applications, but did not become commonplace until the 1960s.
RWM
I remember when they were designated that way, and it was within a year or two after the movie, so I had the same conclusion. Until we hear from the guy who was responsible - one way or the other on that, I believe that is exactly what happened.
they was around well before the movie. but its your fantisy.
Top Gon coal trains run on the NKP to the steel mills in NW Indiana and are regularly seen.
ed
Geez, here’s a link to a webpage - ‘‘Norfolk Southern Top Gons’’ - that I found with more than I ever wanted to know about them. Carl - ‘‘Enter at your own risk !’’ [;)]
http://www.krunk.org/~joeshaw/pics/ns/coal-gon/topgon.shtml
This data under the Special Cars and then the REBODY headings about 3/4 of the way down says that the 2 protoype Top Gon cars - NS 20000 and NS 20001, NS class G84R - were ‘rebodied’ in late 1990 / early 1991.
This page also says down at the bottom that: “Top Gon” is a registered trademark of Norfolk Southern Corporation. It might be fun to find out when that happened as well.
The movie ‘‘Top Gun’’ was released almost 5 years earlier in May 1986, per the IMDB = Internet Movie DataBase for it, at: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0092099/releaseinfo
Here’s also a link to NS’ ‘‘Coal Equipment’’ website page, though it doesn’t seem to mention the TopGons
Here’s some more evidence in support of that theory, in a column from The Roanoke Times, after the 2006 re-release of the movie:
http://www.roanoke.com/columnists/angleberger/wb/121649
You’ll have to read the column to find out about the ‘other half’ of the inside joke. [;)]
-Paul North.
Yep - Here’s the ‘TOP GON’ trademark info - since Oct. 23, 1992 / May 10, 1994, from the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s website, at:
http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4006:13fhe8.4.1
Typed Drawing
| Word Mark | TOP GON |
|---|---|
| Goods and Services | IC 012. US 019. G & S: railroad cars. FIRST USE: 19920909. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 19920909 |
| Mark Drawing Code | (1) TYPED DRAWING |
| Serial Number | 74324785 |
| Filing Date | October 23, 1992 |
| Current Filing Basis | 1A |
| Original Filing Basis | 1B |
| Published for Opposition | April 13, 1993 |
| Registration Number | 1836136 |
| Registration Date | May 1 |
Most Top gons used through the NS St. louis to Princeton IN line use about ten of them a week to haul ties.