The whole thing is scratch built. He turned the pulleys on his metal lathe, it's completely made of brass. He got plans for it and had them reduced to HO scale. He bought the ship kit and added all the touches to make it look real. The man is a craftsman.
Brilliance at its absolute best. A very hard standard to beat. All that marvellous engineering for just one trackside experience, definitely in a class of its own.
wow, thanks for creating, I remember watching that from Lakeview beach, you could hear the loud bangs from the rail cars, great to see how it really worked
I was a kid living in Pennsylvania and I saw one of these in action at a coal fired power plant. I remember because my dad (a mechanical engineer) was blown away. He took pictures and was stayed to watch is dump whole car loads of coal.
cbgadget probably someone not happy about the sonic speed of the cars dropping down to the unloader, and once they drop off the ramp to the switchback. That would be my guess. Not much can be done about that tho
This is amazing! Was it fairly easy to find plans and drawings for this mcmyler coal dumper? Also, beside the abandoned one in NJ on the waterfront ( I think Port Reading) are there any more in existence? (Defunct or still in use?) Was so sad when CSX demolished theirs on the Newport News Waterfront in 1992 just prior to the opening of the Monitor Merrimac Bridge Tunnel. Sad when Norfolk Southern demolished theirs on the Elizabeth River about the same time. Thanks for sharing and your awesome ingenuity!
@@markw3598 calling those with different opinion freak really isn't very civilized, but even more uncivilized is your your comment which burns a very deep fascist label in your forehead.
arealassassin Go research humping yards. Although humping yards do have retarders to control car speed in real life. Don’t know about a coal hopper yard.
You can see videos of the real thing by searching RU-vid for "Sandusky coal loader". The wagons really do roll around under gravity. However, they don't move nearly as fast in real life as they do in the model. That part of it doesn't seem particularly dangerous -- the obvious mitigation is to simply fence off the track. It's very common for freight cars to be allowed to roll free -- as Jim says, hump yards are the main example, but a lot of coal tippers work a wagon at a time, with the unloaded wagons returning to some collection point by gravity.
