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This looks about right.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BNSF_-_Rock_Train_At_Night_(5027874750).jpg
I guess ballast hoppers would work as well.
Unless those rolling rocks are crushed to pebble size, those ballast cars will not be able to discharge them through their bottom doors. What are the loading sizes of the rocks?
Ish,
You would need ballast-type hoppers for loose gravel rock, or use tipping hoppers for larger stones. If these are blocks like granite, then they would be hoisted using block and tackle hoists on to flat cars.
All of these operations can be pretty interesting.
Ben Dorsey made some tip cars for coal, and Dave Snow I think made a similar but larger tip car as used in MOW trains for ballast. These latter cars would probably work for larger stones, I'm thinking.
I think they are called Diffco
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_7NhUqQ_Ek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lpUbSiuA1M
We typically use (United states) either a gondola or a bottom dump. Google "mwax" and those are the newer style we happen to use. The gondolas are used when the customers don't have a way to unload other than a backhoe (sometimes on stilts, which, is pretty neat to see) hope that helps, and we run unit rock trains around houston if you are ever around these parts.
Lets use coal as an example:
1. Out of the mine is was in quite different sized lumps (from pea size to really big chunks) all mixed together.
2. It was usually ground to different sizes for different applications, stored, and shipped that way.
3. I can't think of an application that would use coal in chunks so large they wouldn't fit thru the doors of a side dump or bottom dump traincar. Your gonna burn it and you need a good ratio between volume and surface area (lots of surface area compared to volume). Large hunks do not have that.
4. If there actually was such an application I'd think the coal would be shipped in open top solid floor gons and be unloaded by scooping in some manner.
While most other ores might not be ground and graded like coal the mining process itself tends to grind it to fairly small size so there would be no advantage in shipping it other then in side dump or bottom dump traincars. Loading and unloading would be far more efficient (automatic even).
Some loose products were even shipped in boxcars. Wheat and corn for example until covered hoppers were introduced. Copper ore (on the WP&Y) in boxcars and even flatcars (which had been converted to low side gons). The flat cars had a removable end. The boxcars had a door in one end. They were unloaded by raising the back end of the car up and allowing the product to flow out the open end.
The only stone products I can think of that would be shipped in large hunks would be various kinds of decorative stone (marble for example) which was shipped on flatcars.
Ben
Here ya go, Ish...
https://youtu.be/53_4NlgWcpc
Fletcher Quarry in Westford, MA.
Sadly the railroad is no longer in operation.
Hi Ish:
I don't think I have made any traincars interactive for discrete products like granite slabs. Lots of good candidates on the DLS of course. Any flatcar with 3 or 4 attachment points on the deck should work just fine.
Most quarries cut slabs to a size to fit flatcars and its further cut as needed at its destination. Not a rapid process as I understand it. They have to be cut slowly and carefully to avoid splitting and/or cracking then polished. Finished products were most likely crated and shipped in boxcars.
Might make an interesting set of industries for a route. Slabs from the quarry on flatcars to a cutting industry, smaller (thinner) crated slabs in boxcars to a polishing industry, then those re-crated and shipped to distribution warehouses, and finally to your local Home Depot or Lowes by truck as granite countertops for retail sale. Contractors might get theirs from the warehouse at a lesser cost since they might buy in bulk.
Larger sized blocks for fancy buildings would be pretty much limited to flatcars even after cutting and polishing.
Marble quarries were not gigantic open pits - rather more like a notch in the side of a hill. Bound to be photos on-line to give examples for ideas. Some very specialized marble comes from overseas (Carrera marble is from Italy I think) so it would be picked up from a ship and loaded onto flatcars for shipment to the cutting facility. Give you an excuse for a waterfront scene (but not on MARSZ):hehe:
Ben
Might make an interesting set of industries for a route. Slabs from the quarry on flatcars to a cutting industry, smaller (thinner) crated slabs in boxcars to a polishing industry, then those re-crated and shipped to distribution warehouses, and finally to your local Home Depot or Lowes by truck as granite countertops for retail sale. Contractors might get theirs from the warehouse at a lesser cost since they might buy in bulk.