Some of the unique pieces of rail equipment are car dumpers, used to empty hopper cars when opening the bottom doors just won't do. one of these dumpers has been preserved as part of the Carrie Furnaces National Historic Landmark in Rankin, PA.

The dumper, built in 1937 by Wellman Seaver Morgan in Cleveland, OH, is a stationary high lift type. It unloaded carloads of iron ore which came down from Conneaut harbor on the B&LE then to the Union railroad who brought the ore to the Carrie Furnaces.


We recently cleared a great deal of brush away from the dumper so that it is now visible. Looking in toward the dumper cradle. The entire cradle would rotate on two bearings located on the upper right side of the structure.


Ore is dumped into this transfer car which moved the ore to one of three ore yards in the complex. This car is about 80 feet long and rides on four arch bar trucks.


Looking at the shear leg of the ore bridge. A retarder is still intact in the weeds. It was used to control the speed of empties on their way down to the receiving yard. How many retarders made it into preservation, still installed at their original location?


Grating in which the ore was dumped. Two operators controlled the sumper from inside this pulpit and used high pressure water to dislodge ore sticking to the sides of the cars.

The remote control GE 80 tonner which handled the hoppers still exists on the property as well. All will be preserved as part of the steel heritage center, and a volunteer crew has taken the car dumper area under their wing to clean up and care for the structures. I'll post more photos later, it was raining too hard today to get very many other shots.

That's really great to see, and even better to hear it's under someone's wing.

That looks amazing! I'm sure that if my girlfriend and I ever visited, she'd have to drag me out of there - I can spend hours looking at stuff like that.

About five miles upriver from this dumper is another one, but this one's future is not as bright. At the former US Steel Duquesne Works is a Heyl Patterson rotary dumper, built in the 1960s to supply ore to the Dorothy Six blast furnace. The Duquesne Works is now an industrial park and this dumper is slated to be demolished very soon. Here are a few pics of this type:

Many coal fired power plants have rotary dumpers like these still in regular operation. They are located on balloon loops; the coal trains are ran through and dumped one car at a time, and the train then heads back to the mine up north without stopping.

I take it that these old dumpers didn't involve leaving the cars coupled, rotation centerline on coupler centerline, and rotary coupler draft gear. Perhaps on the 2nd one?

Steve

I don't think either of these dumpers are set up to dump cars while still coupled, but those that do are very similar to the second design.