Commentary on Hurricane Helene

tdmidget · **Joined:** Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:38 pm **Posts:** 52

whodom wrote:

Good news on the Blue Ridge Sub yesterday; video posted to the Clinchfield Railroad group on Facebook shows a train of side dump hoppers headed north filling in a minor washout at the Catawba River just north of Marion.

Work has started.

What is a "side dump hopper" ?

R Paul Carey · **Joined:** Wed Jan 19, 2011 7:48 am **Posts:** 80

Conventional hoppers are "center dump", i.e., through the gauge over a pit or elevated structure.

Side dump hoppers are typically built for MofW service and designed to dump outside the gauge. They're used to build or restore the ballast shoulders.

whodom · **Posted:** Thu Oct 24, 2024 9:21 am

Drone video from the Nolichucky Gorge around Poplar, NC. This is between Spruce Pine, NC and Erwin, TN. This shows what is probably the worst destruction along the former Clinchfield Railroad.

https://youtu.be/epRKspdRgic

choodude · **Joined:** Wed Jun 29, 2016 11:58 am **Posts:** 327

tdmidget wrote:

What is a "side dump hopper" ?

Here's some pictures:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=side+dump+rai ... &ia=images

The ones I've used are powered with air from the locomotives and take awhile to charge up the air reservoir before you can dump them.

Brian Helfrich

tdmidget · **Joined:** Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:38 pm **Posts:** 52

choodude wrote:

tdmidget wrote:

What is a "side dump hopper" ?

Here's some pictures:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=side+dump+rai ... &ia=images

The ones I've used are powered with air from the locomotives and take awhile to charge up the air reservoir before you can dump them.

Brian Helfrich

tdmidget · **Joined:** Mon Oct 05, 2020 11:38 pm **Posts:** 52

A "hopper" , railroad or not, by definition discharges from the bottom. "Side dump" removes it from being a "hopper".

PMC · **Joined:** Sat Oct 17, 2015 5:55 pm **Posts:** 2871

More bad news for NS' AS line: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... hern-line/ Newport Police Department photo.

Bad Order · **Joined:** Sun Jun 23, 2013 1:16 pm **Posts:** 230

Here's a side dump ballast car in action on the UP. A set of big piston air cylinders on both sides and both ends of the car dumps tilting body of the car to either side. I was the engineer on this that day....somewhere I've got the video I had the section man take of us dumping the car... but can only find this still shot.

Attachment:

side dump video-crop.jpg [ 462.96 KiB | Viewed 3042 times ]

Overmod · **Joined:** Thu May 24, 2012 1:37 pm **Posts:** 2492

I wish I had specific images and pages to quote, but in the 'early days' of side-dump equipment, some of these cars were built on the 'dumbwaiter' principle: the tilting bed was supported on near-circular 'irons' arranged so that the bed would self-dump when tripped, then be 'counterweighted' to come back level and latch when the material had slid out.

PrrOpCrew · **Posted:** Fri Oct 25, 2024 12:16 pm

PMC wrote:

More bad news for NS' AS line: https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews ... hern-line/ Newport Police Department photo.

I looked throuhg the google street view photos of the bridge. While they did go through in August 2023, the best photo is this one from November 2016 with no leaves on the threes and you can see the center pier.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/eqjF6rM5vtzDL4pt9

It's bad what's happened down there and others have said it, never understimate the power of water.