Wyoming Bentonite (Wyoben) offers to ship their product in covered hopper cars or in boxcars in 1 ton capacity Super Sacks made of synthetic cloth. The draw string has a large ring for hanging on a fork lift truck fork. Tyburn Railroad has received the product both ways.

In the summer of 1959, I worked at the Kellogg company in Battle Creek. At that time, they were unloading grain from boxcars with scoop shovels that were manually guided by a man inside of the car, and propelled by a winch outside of the car.

A similar device is shown in U. S. Patent 563172:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=pate ... 563172.pdf


Bruce E. Babcock

Tom,

This might be the patent for the machinery shown in your photo:

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=pate ... 938027.pdf

Bruce E. Babcock

Interesting find, Bruce. It sure looks more like the St .Nick loader than a standard Ottumwa boxcar loader.

It makes me sad to think of what will be lost when it finally comes down. Two different coal dumpers (rotary and drop bottom in the same shed) plus the hopper and boxcar loaders.

With the demise of the Huber Colliery, St Nick is not only an historic gem, it is the last of its kind. Once gone a key part of American railroad, mining and industrial history goes with it.

I've never heard of anything like that! A couple of questions come to mind.

First of all, why would they have to carry bulk water at all, it's not like it's hard to find in that area. Most of the line is within sight of a creek. Obviously if it's in a boxcar it's not sterile, and the line isn't long enough that they were importing "Allegheny Mountain Spring Water" to the other end of the line, or were they?

Sure, there's lots of mines on the line, but typically they're more worried about pumping the water out than they are about importing it.

Also, if they were carrying water, for whatever reason, why not use tank cars? Are boxcars even strong enough to be used in that manner?

Anyone have any additional info on this? Photos or documentation?

Well, I did find some additional info via google. Apparently it did occur, but rarely, during dry spells only, and they only filled the cars about 1/3 full.

http://www.mylargescale.com/Community/F ... fault.aspx

I'm not sure what the source of his info is, if he stated that, I missed it.

Here is a similar operation out west, in Spring Canyon, Utah.

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm/singlei ... 235/rec/17

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm/singlei ... 241/rec/18

http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm/singlei ... 968/rec/19

Box car loaders were quite popular here in Utah's Carbon County through the 1910s, but were unable to keep up with the demand for production, i.e., one car at a time, from the side. In turn, each of the mines built a steel loadout that allowed mechanical loading into multiple cars on multiple tracks.

In Coal Age magazines of the period (1910-1920), there are regular ads from Link-Belt, showing their loaders in action.

Don Strack

In the 3rd Utah photo posted by Don Strack, the "coal boards" (basically same as grain doors) are clearly visible in the open D&RG boxcar door. Note how low they were.

I checked density of bulk products at http://www.tapcoinc.com/content/product_data/Tapco_Catalog_09_p88-94.pdf.
Coal, Bituminous, Mined, Run of Mine: 45-55 lbs/ cubic ft.
Wheat: 45-48 lbs/ cubic ft.
So grain doors needed to be ~20% higher than coal doors.

Unloading a boxcar of coal by hand surely took a lot of dirty shovel-and-wheelbarrow work!

- Doug Debs

Here is an advertisement for the equipment used to open grain doors on boxcars. It is from The Consolidated Grain Milling Catalogs of 1932-33.



I suspect that the equipment for coal doors was similar.

Mr. White describes the unloading process, prior to the use of his invention:

Patent 1418343 Ira B. White of Fort Worth Texas, June 6, 1922

Heretofore, in order to remove the doors, or the like, it has been necessary to chop or saw the same, which requires about thirty minutes time, whereas, they are removed by my deice in about three and one-half minutes: a saving of more than twenty –five minutes to each car.

To saw or chop the boards or doors out of the car requires an axe or saw. The operator must climb into the car, for if he stands in front of the door, as it is cut out, he is in danger of being injured by the boards as they are forced out by the grain. This may occur as well if he stands up in the car and the boards give way under the saw or axe, whereas, by the use of my device, the operator stands six or more feet away from the car door, clear of the grain as it escapes, and there is no possible chance to be injured.



Bruce E. Babcock

The water was for the mine boilers in Woodvale and Robertsdale. At that altitude the creeks were small and contained runoff from the mines. One set of fire tube boilers in Robertsdale exploded from being fed tainted water. Water was only hauled during droughts when there was no clean water to be had from the creeks up there.

The boxcars were filled at the standpipe in Rockhill, taken up the mountain, and dumped into the reservoir above Woodvale. Since it was only once in a while that water was hauled, and when it was, it required several cars, the EBT did not see fit to expand its tank car fleet beyond the single car it had.

You can still find mounting holes for the pipe flanges in the bottom of some EBT boxcars. As far as I am aware, there are no decent or public photos of the water hauling taking place.

Chris, here is a few pieces of paper you might find interesting. Apparently the EBT used anything that would hold water, including the tender tanks off retired locomotives. Also included is a roster listing two tank cars in 1936.