Conveyor belt

There, that was easy.

Scott Chatfield

Unloader

Ignoring for the moment that this is a "toy" and not really prototypical, here are some ideas.

The car used is called a "side dump" or "air dump" and its a relatively rare car on railroads.  It is normally used to haul rip rap and large rock and dump it along the right of way to support embankments.  It will also haul gravel or dirt to be used as fill along railroad tracks.  Most railroads own a few of them and they are almost always used in company service.  They are also used in steel mills to dump slag  and waste on waste piles.

One of the challenges with this type of car is that it requires an engine or a really big air compressor to unload it.  There are really big air cylinders under the body.  To dump the car, they unlock the sides, which are hinged at the bottom, then they pressurized the air cylinders on the other side of the car which lift that side of the car and tilt the whole bed of the car, dumping the contents to the side of the tracks.  So no engine or air compressor, there is no way to lift the car and no way to unload it.

If you notice the car on the box is lettered for the McKeesport Coal Co.  so the car is probably carrying waste rock from the mining operation out to a waste rock dump.

There are a couple places this can be incorporated.  It can be used in the quarry or mine to shuttle the mine run ore or rock to a crusher/processor where it is crushed, sorted and processed and then loaded in regular hoppers or gons to be taken to the customer.  It could also be used in a steel mill or mine to move waste rock, slag or cinders to a waste pile. 

There are other places it could be used, for example if your railroad had a lot of high fills or operated in swampy territory the MofW might run cars of rip rap out on a regular basis to dump on the fills or to fill in trestles.  The challenge there is it wouldn't unload at the little gismo it would unload on the main track. 

Gravel Operations Questions

Thank you Scott and Dave for you inputs......!

I totally agree that this a "toy" item, and not a prototypical setup, so I'm going to try and incorporate both your suggestions. I'll transport rip rap and large rocks in the side dump car from my future quarry directly to right of way locations needing embankments, etc......and I'm going to kit bash a conveyer belt that can be placed over the "gismo" or in place of the "gismo" to receive rock, etc. that will be transported to a nearby crusher/processor for sorting, etc.

I really can't see a scenario where "stuff" is placed into the "gismo" for loading back into the side dump car, so I'll most likely remove the "gismo" altogether.

Thanks again......Grampy

Air Dumps

Walthers also made a scale, modern air dump.

I actually have looked for a 3D printed older style (1900 era) air dump since I have a quarry on my layout that produces ballast  and other rock products and an air dump would fit right into that operation.  MR had an article on scratch building one 40 years ago or so, I may have to go that route.

Have you hugged your side dump today?

A side dump is one of a track foreman's best friends, especially when used in tandem with his other best friend, the Jordan Spreader.

Aside from the 100-ton Difco side dump made by Walthers in both kit and RTR forms, there was this slightly older version you must have (I haven't looked it up), and a much older cast metal kit (name escapes me) for a transition era design.

Aside from the MR article, sometime in the last 10 years or so Scale Rails, the NMRA magazine, published a scratchbuilding article about a different design of side dump owned by the Buffalo Creek & Gauley.  Other railroads owned that design too.  So you can have some variety in your side dumps.

Scott Chatfield

Updated Unloading Gizmo

Hi Grampy,

a couple of suggestions, if I may, given that the unloading gizmo causes the car to tip away to the other side of the tracks from the gizmo:

• Look at how the gizmo works. The method could be used with a servo to operate the tip operation. this would allow you to put an unloading point almost anywhere you would like without the perhaps visually intrusive small shed gizmo. There would only be a stiff wire coming up from below somewhere trackside. 
• The gizmo could be hidden in or under another larger structure more suited to quarry operations.
• Because the wagon tips away from the gizmo, the catching point could also be hidden under a structure representing an undercover crusher. The structure would hide a simple chute that would channel your dumped rocks to a catching bucket or similar below the layout.
• You could also dump into the top of an open-air  crusher. This could be represented by a below track "bin" with the bottom of the bin covered by a thin layer of rock which would camouflage the crusher proper.  If you make the bottom of the bin so that it is hinged and can be unlatched, you can catch your dumped rocks in a bucket or similar so that they can be reloaded  
• Because the dumping point is feeding n underground crusher, the quarry conveyor system would start underground below the crusher and would emerge from the ground some distance away from the dump point.

That's probably enough to trigger some thinking about industrial scenic possibilities,

The Walthers Bulk Transfer

The Walthers Bulk Transfer Conveyor is a much more realistic model (if a bit small) than the Life-Like version. I've brought unit aggregate trains into a handful of these unloading facilities and they are all like the Walthers version, but the unloading pit is larger and the conveyors are underground for some distance from the tracks.

The side dump cars included with the Life-Like model are intended to be dumped anywhere as needed along the right-of-way. They can be found on the territory where I work after heavy rain events cause floodwaters to scour the roadbed base.

Gravel Operations Questions

Thank you Scott and John for you inputs......!

Thanks again......Grampy