A rotary car dumper or wagon tippler (UK) is a mechanism used for unloading certain railroad cars such as hopper cars , gondolas or mine cars (tipplers, UK). It holds the rail car to a section of track and then rotates the track and car together to dump out the contents. Used with gondola cars, it is making open hopper cars obsolete. Because hopper cars require sloped chutes in order to direct the contents to the bottom dump doors (hatches) for unloading, gondola cars allow cars to be lower, thus lowering their center of gravity , while carrying the same gross rail load . Cars are equipped with rotary couplers to allow dumping them while they are still coupled; a "Double Rotary" gondola or hopper has rotary couplers on both ends to allow it to be unloaded while it remains coupled to stationary cars at each end.
14-477: Somerset Railroad may refer to: Somerset Railroad (New York) , operated by CSX Transportation to serve a power plant near Buffalo Somerset Railroad (Maine) , predecessor of the Maine Central Railroad, branching from the main line near Waterville Topics referred to by the same term [REDACTED] This disambiguation page lists articles associated with
28-570: A rotary car dumper at the power plant. Also on the line in Lockport is a chemical plant, Vanchlor , which receives Chlorine via the railroad. The first train on the line ran in November 1983. Power was provided by four Conrail GE B23-7s , with 1926 as the lead unit. In March 2020, The New York Times reported that the Kintigh Generating Station would shut down. The Somerset plant closure
42-459: A series of spurs and a loop at the Kintigh Generating Station. Although the Somerset Railroad owned 428 rotary-dump gondola cars, CSX provided their motive power and operated the railroad. Prior to the acquisition of Conrail by Norfolk Southern and CSX in 1998, Conrail provided motive power. The Somerset Railroad right of way includes 15.59 miles (25 km) of trackage, known as
56-718: The Somerset Secondary . Unit coal trains leaving from Youngstown, Ohio , run to Erie, Pennsylvania , followed by Buffalo , then north to the Niagara Branch, where they swing off onto the Lockport Subdivision , and finally in Lockport onto the Somerset Secondary. Even though the Somerset Power Plant owned its own gondolas, CSXT Hoppers were a regular sight at the plant. The coal cars were unloaded using
70-414: The advantage that they can be unloaded anywhere, but the disadvantage that any imperfection in the seals of the doors allows material to spill onto the track. In the mining industry, the long established standard for dumping mine cars was to run them into horns at the ends of the rails at the tipple . The inertia of the car would cause it and sometimes a short segment of hinged rail to tip forward, dumping
84-404: The bottom to allow bulk cargo to be unloaded by gravity. Drop-bottom gondolas , for example, are low-sided open-topped cars where much of the floor of the car is composed of trapdoors . While drop-bottom cars could usually be used for other purposes, side-dump cars and hopper cars with sloping floors to guide the cargo to unloading doors can only be used for bulk cargo. All of these have
98-601: The common method of dumping mine cars was to tip them endwise. By 1921, the Car Dumper Equipment Company was offering a wide variety of rotary dumpers, including not only standard gauge dumpers, but also dumpers for use on mine railways ; some of the latter were designed to dump an entire train in one operation. The primary alternative to rotary dumping has long been provided by a wide variety of self-unloading cars. Most of these are bottom-dump cars of various sorts, equipped with doors of one sort or another at
112-665: The defunct International Railway Co. (IRC) interurban line opened in 1900 under the name Buffalo, Lockport & Olcott Beach (BL&OB) which became part of the IRC in 1902. From Newfane, New York , the SOM sweeps off the IRC (abandoned in 1937) to the Hojack Line in Appleton, New York (Township of Newfane, Niagara County, NY), to West Somerset in the Town of Somerset. It then swings off on new trackage to
126-431: The load out the end of the car. Some of these dump mechanisms completely overturned the car end-for-end, and some allowed the car to continue onward after being dumped. In the 19th century, a patent was issued for a machine to tip entire railroad cars endwise for unloading. Bulk cargo such as grain shipped in boxcars poses particular problems. The Ottumwa Box Car Loader Company built boxcar unloaders that both tipped
140-522: The side as it dumped. In 1901, Erskine Ramsay filed for a patent on a rotary dumper where the center of rotation of the dumper was aligned with the coupling. When combined with Janney couplers that were free to rotate, this permitted dumping cars without uncoupling them from the train. The rotary mine-car dumper offered by the Ottumwa Box-Car Loader Company in 1909 could dump five relatively small mine cars per minute. Prior to this,
154-538: The title Somerset Railroad . If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article. Retrieved from " https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Somerset_Railroad&oldid=303257432 " Category : Disambiguation pages Hidden categories: Short description is different from Wikidata All article disambiguation pages All disambiguation pages Somerset Railroad (New York) The Somerset Railroad ( reporting mark SOM )
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#1732859513461168-455: The way to the power plant. This was the second time the Hojack right of way was abandoned. Prior to line abandonment, all Somerset rail cars were collected by CSX and sent to scrap, with a few remaining in other mixed services. Rotary car dumper In 1893, Timothy Long filed for a patent on a rotary car dumper. This dumper required the car to be uncoupled because the dumper rolled the car to
182-506: Was a direct result of Governor Andrew Cuomo's plan to reduce carbon emissions in New York state. Electricity for the area is now purchased and delivered from power plants in Pennsylvania. Shortly after the plant closure, that October CSX filed for abandonment of the line as the plant was the only customer. In late spring 2022, the line was torn up by CSX from just past the chemical plant spur all
196-706: Was a railroad that operated in Niagara County, New York . It was operated by CSX Transportation . The railroad was built with the primary objective of providing coal to the Kintigh Generating Station , also known as the Somerset Power Plant, a 675 megawatt coal-fired power plant located in Somerset, New York . The railroad was built in 1983 by the New York State Electric and Gas Co. using new and old rights of way . From Lockport, New York , it runs on
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