The recent string about roller bearings on a new/old car raised a question I've often wondered about. Rotary car dumpers predate the wholesale introduction of roller bearing journals by several decades. So for a long time the rotary dumpers were inverting plain bearing cars. All those bearings contained some amount of oil and were typically anything but well sealed. So what happened when such a car was inverted? Seems to me there could have been an awful mess so created. Or did the design of plain bearings, at least on cars intended to be dumped (e.g., Virginian Ry's 12 wheel coal gons) have some effective control of the journal oil? C&O had some of the early large scale roller bearing installations and those were on hopper cars. Perhaps therein lies the answer to my question.

I would suspect it wasn't much of a problem. The box lids have rudimentary seals, and the oiling system is a total loss system anyway. There is not supposed to be a lot of free oil in the box, and much of that would adhere to the box walls as the car turned over, to eventually drain back after it was righted. If the box was overly full when it started, it likely wasn't after the trip through the dumper.

I'd bet they did the inspection and journal oiling in the outbound, rather than inbound, yard.

Just a few extra BTUs in the coal... and helped keep the dust down a bit, too!!!

Howard P.
Dust Guard, CT

I recall seeing plain bearing hopper cars that had been rotary dumped. They had oil stains running up the sdies of the cars all the way to the bulb angle.