Truck dump - a gradually rising ramp ending at a sheer, straight drop overlooking a track. A dump truck backs up the ramp and dumps his load off the end into a car sitting on the track below.
I know that truck dumps were used by small, remote coal mines to get their coal on a railroad for delivery and I know of one location where ballast was dumped by trucks into hoppers, but I wonder if any other material was transferred in this fashion. Do you know of any?
I’d like to see some pictures of truck dumps, coal or other product. When I search Google for truck dumps, I get photos of dump trucks. [banghead] Do you have any you could post?
Just south of Creede on the Rio Grande’s branch to there is a small truck dump. I assume it was used for ore transfer for hard rock mining. I thought there was a kit for it at one point, but I had no luck with coming up with that in a search or for pics of the prototype on the internet.
There is a pic of it on pg. 231of the Colorado Rail Annual no. 14.
I like that one, Bear. Seems to be just what the OP is talking about. A flat dump has to be better than trying to back up a ramp. Even if you have to negotiate a ramp to get to the flat area.
I’d also have a big ole’ timber bolted to the end of truck dump, so the driver can nudge his way back to it, without going over the edge. Blair Line makes one.
For one of my first scratchbuilding projects, I built one of these from plans in Model Railroader. It was in the style of a two-bent timber trestle, with a wood “abutment”. Neatest of all was a fold-down ramp that extended over the freight car a bit. I think the truck pushed it down when it backed up. There were counterweights, I’m sure, though I didn’t install them.
I did a search, and it appears the article was: “Kentucky and Tennessee Coaling Station” in Model Railroder December 1959, p. 47.
There is an excellent article in the October 2015 Model Railroader by Ken Kyser about modeling ne of these coal truck dumps.
I have seen some of these installations but all were derelict and abandoned and weed grown. One was in an area in Illinois near coal mines so I assume it indeed was used to dump coal from trucks into hoppers. But one was in Ripon Wisconsin nowhere near any coal deposits. Perhaps iron ore since there were some iron deposits in the general area, but more likely, a gravel pit.
While they wouldn’t always dump directly into a rail car, sugar beets were a load that was dumped, usually into a pit served by a conveyor, which in-turn, loaded the cars - mostly gondolas or hoppers. I plan on adding a beet loader on the upper level of my layout.
I found it. I have had days like that, or that felt like that. The link uses a a word that most of us would use (or worse) if it happend to us so I won’t post the link either. According to the caption the truck was loading corn into an open top hopper – I assume during the grain rush when they use anything with wheels just about.
The search also showed a Walthers kit (933-4058) for a dump truck unloading kit but of a different sort – a ramp for the truck then a sort of small housing for the dumped load, and a portable conveyer for transmitting the load to an open top car.