"DO NOT PUSH".....?

Shoveled out a few of those cars in my day. It's almost as if a bomb went off inside.
Added bonus if the car had a flat spot on the wheel.

 

Nope, I had no idea. Thanks!!

 

Those are special.

Hump yards is literally gravity. Up the bill hill several big beefy engines push a string of cars.

At the top less than walking pace a man disconnects or decouples the designated rail car from the others. Sometimes he will uncouple say 8 rail cars that stay together. Once over the top and free, computers take over running retarders against the wheels to maintain or allow a too slow car to increase speed.

A series of switches are pre-lined for where this car is going. Let's say you have a boxcar of Lumber going to Lowes in Hagerstown Maryland, and the Hump Yard is in Memphis. It will roll downhill very far past many other tracks, switches and so on until it reaches the designated track specifically for a train going to Maryland. Once it is switched into that track it's going at 5 mph or less. Usually but not always makes it all the way to a coupling with the next car in the rest of the new train being built for Maryland. Keep in mind dozens of cars are going over the hill at the same time all are divided like a house of cards going wherever. Some to Chicago, some to LA, others to Atlanta, some to Seattle etc.

Eventually there is enough cars to make up a tonnage train for Maryland a trim engine set comes up and verifies that ALL of the cars are coupled. If a car is short and not coupled, the rest of that train will be pushed onto it coupling it.

A road engine crew is called out, they go collect the big engines and hook on to the Maryland train and leave Memphis rail yard asap probably via St Louis and then east through Indy, Cincinnati and so on. It will probably get into Highfield PA and then use the McConnelsville Main to access Cumberland first and thence to Hagerstown. to be switched out and sent to the Lowes dedicated rail to truck yard down town.

Railroad humping is alot of pushing and shoving. There is just too much money involved in that cargo to allow a computer to do the driving to hook it to other cars. The hump yard in memphis will see that special notice, find out which specific train is goes onto and have a very special engine with a human crew go get it, and gently tow it to the train to be made up. It usually will wait until all assigned cars have been sent to that particular train and then it's tacked on last very gently and either the road engine crew hooks onto the whole thing there or it's installed with a Freddie end of train device and the road engine hooks on the other end and establishes communication with the freddie for air pressure (Braking etc)

Certain cars if you see large tank cars marked CORX I think it was, a private marking of Coors Beer if you humped it at Memphis you would end up disturbing the contents under a great deal of pressure already. Just like as if you accidently dropped a soda can or a beer can from a great height. BANG. now that is one item you no longer want to be around because it's become a bomb waiting to go off.

IF you hae any idea you are going to sneak a few buckets out of a parked tank car of beer? Forget it. There is usually enough big time pressure inside that load that theoratically can take your hand, arm or leg off if you don't know to unload it correctly and you probably will drown badly in that pond of beer.

 

The belly dumps out here that have air ride on the trailers have that sign. Otherwise, push away on that stinger. It’s pretty easy to get stuck spreading aggregate products in a 2 axle with a set of doubles.

 

You don’t wanna push a set of doubles cause it could bend something on the dolly or one of the kingpins on the set up. It’s safer to just get pulled out if ever stuck. Most tailgates on end dumps are hollow on the out side. Just a piece of flat metal with a boxed frame on the outside for support. I hate when I see one of our gates dented up from some loader pushing the truck out of a jam.

All of our super 18s have “do not use hooks” on the back of the gates. That’s so the asphalt spreader doesn’t hook up to the truck and scratch the living crap outta the alcoas

 

Do you have a picture of this spreader hooked to the wheels. I have an idea, but id like to see what it looks like in real life