I saw an empty coal train(DETX) the other day with the rotary coupler ends so random, it would have to go over a hump to put things right.
That got me thinking about Rotary coal dumpers. How common are they and what are the pros and cons compared to bottom dumping? How many cars at a time can the biggest ones handle? How long have they been around? How long does it take to unload a coal train?
Are there any that can be seen operating in Northern Illinois, without being a national security risk?
Rotary dumpers are pretty much the norm at recently built power plants these days. They require a lot less labor and are probably safer than bottom dumping although the initial capital expense is a lot higher.
I don’t think that there are are too many rotary dumpers in Northern Illinois. Most of Comm Ed’s coal-fired plants are located on waterways and get their coal by barge, a fair amount of it being transloaded at Powerton on the Illinois & Midland. The Rail-to-Water (KCBX) facility at 100th Street and the Calumet River uses bottom dumping with car shakers.
Rotary cars are getting more and more common.15 years ago when I hired on the NS I saw few rotary cars around.A rotary car usually stays in a “unit” train and is maintained by the company which owns it,a plus for the railroad.One of the downsides I can think of is the height of the cars.Sometimes the mine loadouts are not tall enough to place the loadout shoot over a rotary dump car,a negative for everbody.But most mines I know of have upgraded to accept these type of cars.
At the port of Duluth/Superior, there is a huge pile of coal, that gets loaded onto boats. Every time I’ve been by there, a BNSF coal train is cirling the pile at 1-2 mph. What kind of dumping system would this indicate?
CP rail has had rotary dump cars for 30 + plus years.
They run about 110 car unit trains from South eastern BC to The west coast
( Roberts bank ).They can dump 3 cars at a time. Takes about a 8 hour shift.
These unit trains are all robatized.( 1 loco on the head end 1 on the tail end.)It take about 4 days to make the loop and all of these coal sets around 30 sets are serviced at at the Golden BC coal car shop.
Coal is unloaded either from the top of the car (the car is turned upside down) or the bottom via doors, giving rise to these variations:
standard hoppers (often called cross-hoppers, because their doors run crosswise to the axis of the car), dumped by opening the doors over a trough or trestle; the coal is removed mechanically from the dumping area
standard hoppers, not rotary-coupler-equipped, dumped in a rotary dumper one at a time, the cars being uncoupled from the train during the dumping operation. This type of dumper has been around since at least the 1930s at coal docks such as Sandusky, Norfolk, Chicago, etc.
standard hoppers, rotary-coupler-equipped, used interchangeably in rotary dumpers while remaining coupled to the train, or bottom-dumped. There aren’t very many of these in the fleet.
rapid-discharge hoppers, using air-activated doors that empty the car quickly and require no human intervention to open and close the doors. This type of car appeared in the 1970s.
rotary-dump gondolas, able to be emptied only by rotary dumping, equipped with rotary couplers, dumped while remaining coupled with their neighbors.
Probably there are somewhere some rapid-discharge, rotary-coupler-equipped hoppers, but I haven’t seen them!
The decision of which to purchase is complex. For unit-train service today, the most common purchase is either rapid-
Can you explain how one of these works please? I’m having trouble visualizing this. Thanks
Hill 582 explains it?[%-)]
Is a Bethgon Coal-porter considered a rapid-discharge version?
Duuuuh, Don’t you get it? Geeze I had you pegged for smarter then that.
Just kidding. My bad. The wrong link was on my clipboard. Here is the right one.
http://rrpicturearchives.net/srchThumbs.aspx?srch=Rapid+discharge&search=Search
Chad: I can’t get that link to open up.
Brian: Huh?
Didn’t work for me either. Try this one.
http://rrpicturearchives.net/srchThumbs.aspx?srch=Rapid+discharge&search=Search
OK I see the car. How does it get unloaded using air, without human involvement?
I don’t know. I would guess that there are pnumatic pistons that tap the train line for air. Mabee controlled by a shoe somewhere on the car that actuates the door over the unloading pit. Thats just a guess though.
They’re definitely not Bethgons. Bethgons appear to have round-bottom doors that run along the same axis as the rails. Or maybe they don’t have doors at all?
I don’t believe they have doors. But seeing as how we don’t really have coal trains here I don’t know much about them.
Westshore Terminals near Vancouver, British Columbia can rotary dump a train in two hours, two cars at a time, while unloading another train in 4 hours on the other track, 1 car at a time.
http://www.portvancouver.com/trade_shipping/terminals/bulk/westshore.html
OK, I’m here, finally.
Mr. Hadid, there are plenty of rapid-discharge hoppers that are also equipped with rotary-coupler ends. That way they can be unloaded at either type of facility commonly seen at power plants.
Rapid-discharge (using the term generically–it used to be Ortner’s trademark) cars use air to operate the gates, which open more widely than those on conventional hoppers. In fact, it’s like the entire bottom falling out. The gates are actuated by a shoe on the side of the car, which is triggered electronically. Air to operate the gates comes from the trainline. I believe these trains have to sit somewhere, change hoses, and charge up the discharge system a short time before going through the plant.
To the many who asked, Bethgons and similar cars are, as the name implies, gondolas. No discharge outlets; dump on a rotary dumper only.
And as for the improperly-oriented rotary couplers, we’ve had a thread on this before. They may pose a bit of an operational problem when two rotary couplers are coupled to each other–the whole coupling may shift and cause some undue binding. However, a dumper that can handle two cars at once will have no problem dumping cars regardless of their orientation. All you have to do is be sure that the coupling without any rotary couplers is in the middle.
How does the rotary dumper operate? Does the train have to stop,let the rotary dumper spin 2 cars, then pull up 2 car lengths, and do it again?
You betcha!
Although there are other ways the principle is applied. I believe some operate by pushing the car(s) into the dumper where they are dumped, then they roll out the other side, down a ramp, through a spring switch, up a kickback ramp, then out to the “empty” yard.
The co-gen plant where I work bottom dumps one car at a time, after which the coal is conveyered over to the pile area. An old switcher pushes (or pulls) the cars through via RC. The leads on either side of the dumper show clearly where the switcher stops by way of the oil spots on the ballast.