I have seen many different unit trains but yesterday was a peculiar first. We have a unit sand train that comes by in hopper cars a couple times a month. Yesterday a northbound CSX unit sand train all in fairly new CSXT Gondolas came by. The sand was piled into three piles in each gon. I am not sure about the quality of the sand as it appeared silghtly lighter in color than normal concrete sand.
The prolem of unloading the sand immediately comes to mind. Anyone with any ideas?
Clamshell bucket or a Herzog cartopper…vacuum truck will not work acct. moisture is not controlled.
A ‘‘hoe’’, excavator, or even a Gradall-type machine that’s either sitting somewhat above the rail level alongside, or otherwise has the cab for the Operating Engineer high enough to see over the side of the gon for most of its width, could also do the job pretty well. Especially with a ‘‘shovel technician’’ assisting it to clean the stray sand out of the corners and from around the side braces, etc. Nothing but simple work, that’s all there is to it.
Would it not be conceivable that an organization large enough to receive unit trains of a single comodity-Sand- be able to justify a rotary dumper facility?
How long would it take to unload a whole train by mechanicaL means with a follow up brooming operation.
I’ve been around river barge ops where the contents were ‘clammed’ out into rail cars, with a rubber- tired bucket loader and several sweepers o do the final clean up and it would take several days. I would think a similar style operation on a train of X number of cars would take quite a lot of hours.
Like this.
The operator uses the back hoe and out riggers, and pulls the entire machine up onto the gondolas, then simply drives from gon to gon unloading…a steady stream of dump trucks keeps pace, takes about ½ hour to empty a gon.
Or this works just as well.
Note the out riggers keeping the hoe steady.
Ed…is there no “out rigger” rigs used with such a veh…? If not, I wonder how the tracks can get enough “grip” on the top rails to “stay put” with the forces on them by the work of the loader bucket…
Quentin,
In the top photo the tracks fit inside the hopper, the operator drives over the load, then positions himself as you see, and empties the car, in this photo, the one ahead of him or to the right.
Then he backs up over the load behind, positions himself between the next two cars, and starts over.
The back hoe has enough reach to go all the way from one end of the car to the other, and the weight in the bucket is small compared to the weight of the back hoe, no worries about it being unstable.
This guy was good at it, and kept the dump trucks moving quite quick.
There is a dirt ramp at the end of the cut of cars so he can drive up on the car
If you look closely, you can see another cut of cars behind the ones in the top photo, he was reaching into them also and cleaning them out, doing two tracks side by side at one time.
This was at a “mobile” concrete plant, they were mixing the concrete for the expansion of IH 10, (Katy freeway) about a mile away from the location of the plant.
About a month after this photo, they moved the entire operation west about 10 miles to another field, laid down two sets of panel tracks and a run around off of the old SP Hearn line, they cut into a siding, installed a switch, and in about 3 days were up and running again.
The concrete mixer and all of the assorted equipment had truck frames and braces, along with axels with freeway tires and they could lay it down, hook up to tractor trailer rigs, (18 wheelers) and move out in less than a day, really an impressive operation.
When they arrived at the new location, they had the mixing tower and other parts standing up in the same day they arrived on…the tower and mixer were several stories tall, pretty slick set up.
They make up the dry mix, and add the aggregate and water at the last minute in the cement trucks…this stuff is still mixing when it arrives on the pour site.
Tdot leased several fields from farmers along the I 10 cor
A couple of years back someone posted a set of pictures showing how a backhoe essentially raised itself up onto a line of gondola cars. It was in one of the forums. FYI
Rgds IGN
One minor correct, the Cat 315C is actually can excavator. I used to think they were backhoes also. http://www.cat.com/equipment/hydraulic-excavators/small-hydraulic-excavators
It’s CSX… they’ll just derail the cars to get the sand out…
[:-^]
j/k
Ed, thanks once again for the detailed, thorough, and informative explanation, as always. [tup] [bow]
Per the link provided above by ericsp, the Cat 315C small [?] excavator weighs about 38,000 lbs. So using a typical coefficient of friction for steel-on-steel of 0.25 - which might be low, considering the gripping effect of the ‘grouser’ ridges on the tracks - that means it wouldn’t move until it was pulling horizontally with a force approaching 0.25 x 38,000 lbs. - 9,500 lbs., or almost 5 tons. As long as the operator didn’t snag a steel brace or something similar inside the car, that’s not going to happen - even a big bucket could ‘break-out’ quite a bit of sand with less force than that.
Cleaning out cars on the adjacent track at the same time with the machine - ‘‘There you go !’’, just as I said above.
Unless it is a permanent installation that’s going to be operating for ma
“One minor correct, the Cat 315C is actually can excavator. I used to think they were backhoes also.”
Correction to the correction: A Backhoe is any excavating device that uses a Boom equipped with a Dipper Stick (the smaller arm attached to the boom) with a digging action that pulls a Dipper Bucket BACK towards the machine in a HOEING action. Therefore the CAT 315C is a Backhoe type excavator.
The smaller Herzog machine is a Tractor/Backhoe /Loader(i.e a tractor with a front mounted loader and a rear mounted backhoe) commonly referred to simply as a “backhoe” in many parts of the U.S. However in the Southeast it is common to refer to tracked Hydraulic Excavators as “backhoes”…both usages are essentially correct.
Paul,
The aggregate or rock in the top photo most likely came from Georgetown Texas…they have a lot of quarries there, and the GRR, Georgetown Railroad is a major hauler of limestone in various stages, from crushed rock to big blocks…there are a lot of granite quarries up around there also.
I have no clue where the sand in the open gon comes from, I would guess some where in Texas also.
And to clarify the “debate” about the technical name of the equipment…down here we are all hicks and anything that drags back towards the body of the machine is a back hoe…what’s funny is to hear a Texan try and say Kubota real fast…
This is so neat! I’d have guessed that they had FRA rotary couplers on them, but I never dreamed that they would unload them with a backhoe.
Got to looking around and found these two videos on ou Tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Zn4eVaRhGM&feature=related
#2) this is a video of a Cat 319 backhoe climbing up onto a railcar to unload:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1CMSV81_ws.
#3) This an NS RR machine climbing out of a car on a rigged up ramp, with the aid of a tie pick-up rig:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnk0AmxziWk&feature=related
It is amazing what can be done with some talent and imagination!