I was looking at some Herzog sand gondolas–that look a lot like steel cars to me. They are flat-bottomed, and are used to haul sand. Similar, I have seen some flat-bottomed coal cars.
How does one unload them? It would seem to be to be very cumbersome to do with a mechanical shovel. It would strike me as nearly impossible to get the 15% of sand/coal out around the sides of the car.
I am sure this has an obvious answer that I just do not see, so someone can enlighten me.
Gabe
Very common for rock products – sand, aggregate, ballast, rip-rap, etc., as well as ore concentrates, dirty dirt, municipal sludge, etc. You can either reach into the car with a long-reach excavator, or put the excavator on a platform above or next to the car, or the excavator climbs on top of the car and empties it out. It might leave behind 5 percent but usually less than 1 percent. If you’re really particular you can put a man with a muckstick in the bottom of the car to clean the corners, but when we’re talking rock products worth less than $15 a ton, few bother. Even with concentrates worth $80 a ton it may not be worth it.
RWM
Herzog owns a fleet of backhoe loaders which are modified to be able to literally climb onto hoppers and gons to position the backhoe to reach down and unload the car:
http://www.herzogcompanies.com/railroad_services_cartopper_material_handler.php
Additionally, modern hydraulic excavators can be equipped with long booms and grapples to unload such cars from ground level, a common practice in the scrap metal recycling industry.
In the old days Gons were onloaded by gantry or crawler cable cranes equipped with magnets or clamshell buckets which was much more time consuming…
You can use a tractor-loader-backhoe (TLB) with clips to help it travel down the top of the car sills, or an excavator similarly modified, but most of the receivers of rock products just use an excavator because it is much bigger and faster than a TLB. Most of the time the excavators are not modified at all, they just sit on top of the load.
Here’s a video of an ordinary excavator climbing onto a car using some hausgemacht steel stepping-stools.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1CMSV81_ws
If you really want lots of production at low cost, and you are doing it at one location, then you build a platform over the track, and put the excavator on the platform so you don’t have to mess around with climbing in and out of the cars. If you’re going to be doing this long term, you take the tracks off the excavator and mount its ROTEK (the ring around which the carbody rotates) onto the platform permanently. To advance the cars you can use either a car-puller, a trackmobile, or, if the track is flat enough, you can set one handbrake on the string of cars and the excavator operator uses the excavator bucket to advance the cars against the single set handbrake.
The TLB with clips is a great solution for track maintenance projects, not cost-effective for long-term shipper solutions.
RWM
Also rotary dumper if so designed.
Squint very hard at my avatar photo.
Ordinary gons and hoppers can be run through a rotary dumper one at a time. Steel mills, smelters, concentrators, and fertilizer plants were particularly keen on the single-car dumper back in the 1920-1960 time frame, before unit-train rates became available and it became more economically attractive to obtain dedicated trainsets with rotary couplers. But at $12 million for a single-car dumper, it takes a lot of production to justify its cost. Only if you’re dumping on the order of 100-plus cars per day, and your plant has an expected lifetime of 15-plus years, does a rotary dumper look attractive. Or, if you’re dumping dirty dirt and you want to be able to control dust better, minimize exposure of the operators, etc.
RWM
Note that this is a very low-tech, ‘no special equipment needed’, non-capital intensive, mobile/ easily relocated, ‘no plans or permits needed’, quickly implemented and flexible/ no long-term commitments, etc. approach that can be set-up and used almost anyplace that you can get the cars to - if that material is going to be used there, they’ll likely already have or can get that kind of heavy equipment in to unload the cars anyway. Perhaps at a price of slightly higher unloading costs - but if the volume is comparatively small, that’s still less expensive than the capital recovery costs. If the car is in dedicated service, a couple tons of the stuff stuck in the corners won’t even have to be cleaned out before the next load. And if it does have to be cleaned out - I hear there’s a recession on, and people are - or should be - looking for honest work (or so ol’ JGK would say . . . [swg] ).
I happen to run across a operator placing his tractor up onto a hopper.
My jaw dropped.
1, 2, 3 he was on top. For a MILLION dollars I would not think he could have done it.
Despite appearances, as long as the operator is belted in and the machine is ROPS = Roll-Over Protective System equipped in the cab area - anything recent surely is - he’s probably pretty safe if the worst happens.
I wonder how often it does happen, compared to some of the other frequent mishaps - such as contacting energized overhead power lines, sliding into holes or trench collapses, hitting underground lines, etc. I haven’t yet seen a report of that happening . . . knock on wood . . . thankfully. I wonder if there is a specific OSHA regulation that pertains to requiring solid support and having certain portions of the equipment on the ground at all times. But if that had to be done, then maybe it would mean that you could never unload one from a low-boy trailer, etc. ?
Can you imagine being the supervisor of the 1st guy who thought up this stunt and wanted to try it ? Maybe he just went ahead and did it, and only after it all worked out OK, then told the boss. Or, the supervisor who had to tell the operator, "Now here’s what I want you to do . . . " ?
I am dubious that anyone ever just tried this on a whim with an unmodified backhoe-loader but stranger things have happened…
Spend enough time around construction equipment and operators, eventually you will run across several candidates.
[tup] Some on a dare or as a result of banter, some out of ego or curiosity, some wanting to be a ‘star’ or a ‘hero’, some wanting to be innovative or more productive or helpful, some because ‘It’s there’, and a very few just because they know they can - and some of them are even correct about that. (R.I.P., Davy DeTurk, who was one of the latter, and never met a machine he didn’t like.)
Railway man, I’ll call you on that. I defy you to find a steel mill that has or ever has had a rotary dumper.
The usual way of unloading scrap is directly from the car to the charging bucket. Especially for electric furnaces the material must be loaded with care to protect the refractory lining in the furnace. The crane operator carefully places and layers the different grades to produce a gentle drop and good chemistry. Scrap arriving faster than it can be consumed is unloaded with a magnet into separate piles. If a rotary dumper was used every car would dump abut 2-3 tons of dirt, dunnage and other non ferrous items.
Here’s photos.
http://home.comcast.net/~steelmanjules/coalore_pr_page.html
http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?location=AK%20Steel%20Mill
Geneva Works had 2, one for coal and coke, and the other for iron ore and limestone. Somewhere in the garage I have photos I took on various visits.
RWM
RWM’s first link will take you to a webpage of photos of a 1995 railfan tour of the Bethlehem Steel plant, right before it closed - so I suppose that’s why the infamous steel mill paranoia about photos of the plant didn’t seem to apply. That page has multiple photos of the car dumper, as well as the giant traveling ‘ore bridges’ that managed and handled the iron ore stockpile after the cars were unloaded. At least 1 of those ore bridges is still there - it’s now an icon for and holds the sign for the new (opened Memorial Day weekend 2009) Sands casino.
I don’t know [yet] if the car dumper is still there. It would have made a good thrill ride for the kids. [swg] [:-,] Better yet - enclose the car’s area with glass and put in a pair of giant styrofoam or foam rubber dice, and use it to ‘throw’ them every hour or so to determine a high-rolling ‘lucky winner’ !
Just FYI - There’s a new book out titled Bethlehem Steel Railroading, by Nevin Sterling Yeakel. I haven’t seen it yet, so I can’t comment on it.