Just wanted to let everyone know that the Friends of the Burlington Northern Railroad, the historical society focused on the Burlington Northern Railroad and...
... From: Norm Metcalf Subject: FW&D negs for sale Now available is 10-page Rail Negative List #69 with black & white negatives for sale. Of FW&D pertinence...
Gareth Bayer's recent post on the MFCL advising that his "They came from Chicago Heights" web site has now been merged into his "Wagons on the Web" site...
Does anyone know when the BN stopped applying ACI labels to their locomotives and freight cars? Thanks. John Gillies Canberra, Australia [Non-text portions of...
Thanks to Chad Hewitt for his advice on the MFCL pointing me to previous posts on both the MFCL (10 previous posts; 2 in 8-05 and 8 in 4-04) and BNlist (5 in...
Hello Group, I'm looking for photos of BN passenger cars placed in work service, in particular the X-000 series. Also looking for early hi-railed vehicles. Any...
Does anyone have pictures or other information about typical loadout facilites at coal mines in the PRB in the 1960's-1970's? Was it done from silos into...
Bill, Significant coal mining and coal loading is a recent phenomenon in the PBR. Prior to about 1970, there was almost no mining going on as the low sulphur...
Hi Rico, It sounds like you are looking for GN or ex-GN if you want X-000 series numbers. I have a few photos in an obscure directory that is not easy to...
Bill, Thanks for the response but I'm still a little confused. I'm interested primarily in the unit hopper trains of the early '70s, before the advent of...
Bill, I am not much help regarding the PRB coal as the joint line as we know it tday was completed in late 1979 . The coal mines were using balloon tracks...
Bill, I know that the silo method of loading existed from the mid to late '60s. Rio Grande served a mine in Craig, CO which had a silo loading operation at...
Bill, I was just looking through some books. One of them, Patrick Dorin's "Everywhere West The Burlington Route" shows a photo of the Decker Mine loading...
I went to work for BN in the PRB in 1974. There were only two unit coal train mines, Belle Ayr Mine on what is now the Orin line south of Gillette and (East)...
Thanks, Al, Bill, and Paul. It sounds like the typical unit coal train in the early 1970s would have been conventional hoppers without rotary couplers loaded...
Bill, With the advent of the the unit train, most power plants also had some sort of balloon track arrangement. If they didn't use rotary dump, they used...
When I went to work in 1974 most of the trains had rotary couplers. The rotary ends are identified by a painted white or colored stripe on the rotary end. We...
Ok, let's see if I've got it straight this time. During the BN 1970- 1973 "Rainbow" era, unit coal train loadouts were as described above, and offloading was...
... No I wouldn't say that. There are still a lot of hopper bottoms out there. Even new trains of them. Many of the hopper trains now have air cylinders to ...
Al, So although rotary equipped cars were in widespread use by the early 70's, bottom dump hoppers continue to be used extensively even today. I guess either...
Al, I think the flat bottom cars with rotary couplers were probably cheaper to build, too. The door hinges and mechanisms get expensive both from a ...
Bill, There is no "wrong" direction. They just all need to be in the same direction. Cars and even portions of trains get "out of position" due to failures and...
uys , looking at the various msgs comeing thru , I just wonder why are you all looking at the start of the movement , not the end of the line ...... some...
Mike Shepherd
ourmob@...
Dec 13, 2005 7:33 am
5149
As a yard conductor on the UP I've occaisionally had to deal with empty gons facing the wrong way. A nearby power plant (near Milwaukee) has the bad orders...
If some cars are the wrong way wouldn't some rotary couplers be coupled to other rotaries? I thought that was not allowed because they could hurt themselves...
Paul, That is true. There has to be at least one rotary coupler between each set of cars. As mentioned in an earlier post, some trains have one or two...
Thank you Bill for your explanation but maybe I didn't make my question clear. I thought it wasn't allowed to have two rotary couplers coupled together while...
Paul, I don't know the answer to that question. You may be correct. I am not sure what two rotary couplers would do together. I don't think that there is any...
