Very impressive

Dan,

Nice job- that loader looks great in operation. The slow speed of the train and the way the coal loads into the hopper cars is extremely effective. I'm anxious to see some more photos of the loader and the unloading facility when its finished.

Tom Patterson

Working Coal

Very cool load out. It works very well. The dumper video is private. Change it to public please.

This Video is Private...

This Video is Private...

Nice!

That's really a neat loader Dan!  Very nice work.  I agree with Tom about the train speed and loading pace.  I'm looking forward to seeing the rotary dumper once the video becomes available.

Now you're making me want to find a way to load my covered hoppers at the grain elevators. 

That's...

That's pretty darn slick.  Excellent work and photos!  Thanks for sharing

Very good

The realism is fantastic. Have to wonder how heavy the car fully loaded will be and will if affect the length of your trains?

oops

sorry bout the second video. Should be fixed now

Cheers

Dan

Excellent. Very realistic

Excellent. Very realistic loading.

Great looking

Great looking coal loader. This almost makes me want to cancel my order for cast loads. That will be one fantastic operation when done. I really liked the way the loads filled up the car and left room for the loads to settle in transit.

Rob

I spent a great deal of the

well done!

It is an impressive loading operation - well done!!

Not so sure about the dumper though. Looks like a lot of work since each car will need to be placed and uncoupled and replaced.

If a proper rotary dumper is not feasible, how about a vacuum?
Suck the loads up from the top and deliver the material back to the loader.

Great Work But Never

Live loads will never be on my layout. The problems they cause far out weigh the visual benifits. 

Nice engineering!

Is this HO?  Also, on the rotary dumper, is the lock servo actuated?  How does the rotation mechanism work?  I'm always curious about mechanical things!  This will be a great operation!

The lock bar for the rotary

The lock bar for the rotary dumper is actuated by 1 servo and its arm is connected to the lock bar by a rod. The servo underneath the baseplate has had the pot removed and the limit pin on the final gear removed. This allows the servo to retain its torque but give it 360 degrees of movement. there is a line that runs from the backside of the tilting table to a spool mounted on this servo. As it winds it up it pulls down the back side of the table until it hits its limit pins.reversing the direction of the servo unwinds the spool and the counterweight as well as the spring pulls the table back upright. hope this explains it somewhat.

Cheers

Dan

Well done!

Rotary dumper

I love the operational coal loader and rotary dumper you shared. It shows we should use more servos and less electromagnet devices as most coal loading kits I've seen all worked with an electromagnet controlled shute. Your loader is way better. Seeing it brought me back to my old signature ore train days and started dreaming about real operations on a Free-mo layout.  So I googled around on the web to see if someone actually makes a kit for a rotary dumper where cars can stay connected, as I recalled having seen rotary HO Kadee couplers on the market. Turns out, Walthers does makes a HO scale rotary dumper kit for a reasonable (IMHO) price even which can be made fully functional:

http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3903

Googling for 'ho rotary car dumper' gives several videos and sites that use/modified that kit. Awesome!

Seeing your operating coal facilities makes me itch to add an ore/coal loading and an unloading facility in Free-mo to my already long list of modules I'd someday wish to build. Time to get out of this armchair...

The single car unloading from

Also like single car handling at a rotary dumper

I am about 50% finished with a scratch-built rotary dumper for wood chip cars at a pulp mill.  I was trying to figure out the lock and rotation mechanisms; I think you did it for me.  Nice work - please keep the photos coming as you integrate these models into their final home!

Prototype single-car dumper

When I was a child in the 1950s, we lived in Newport News, Virginia where C&O had its terminal for unloading the coal from those coal cars from W.Va.  We sometimes went to watch it happen.  The loaded cars were put in a yard at a few feet higher elevation.  They were released one at a time to roll downhill and out on a pier where a rotary dumper turned the car over and dumped the coal onto a chute over a conveyor.  When the car was turned upright, it was allowed to continue rolling further out on the pier until it started up a vertically curved section of track.  I think the end of the track probably got up to about 45 degrees (100 percent grade), but the car didn't go quite that high.

As the car went up the track, it lost speed and started rolling back down and toward the shore.  It was diverted from going back into the dumper by a spring switch which lead it out on a parallel track to a second yard at a lower elevation.  All done by gravity (except for the rotary dumper and conveyor) and it dumped the cars singly, no rotary couplers needed.  The coal continued a ways further out the pier by conveyor belt where it was dumped into the hold of a ship (collier).  I could watch it for hours.  That's what was known as cheap entertainment in those days.  I'd like to see that modeled.  Except for the girder framework, all the mechanism was out in the open for all to see.  They do it a different way now where I think the train doesn't even stop moving.  Probably not worth a drive across town to see, but way more efficient.

Nice concept Dan, and it

Nice concept Dan, and it looks like you are making progress.

I wish I could some days.

Matthew