mineral wagons Closing mineral wagons bottom doors

[corneliuslundie]

At EXPO EM on Saturday the question of how the bottom doors of a private

owner wagon were closed was posed. There were several suppositions but

no definitive answer. Does anyone know how they were closed? We felt

crawling under the wagon and pushing the doors up whilst the peg was

replaced seemed somewhat dangerous.

Jonathan

Edited May 20, 2019 by corneliuslundie
Typo

[Compound2632]

Now that's had me scurrying to look at drawings. Midland D299 wagons and similar have a mechanism for releasing the bottom doors that I'd never noticed before. LNWR wagons - D53/D54 etc. - have similar; reference to A.J. Watts' Ince book suggests that it was an RCH 1887 standard component. But that's no help with closing the door again! As the hinge was on the side of the door nearest the centre of the wagon, I suppose it could be pulled shut by pulling the bottom edge towards one with a shunter's pole? But I don't see how it could be finally closed and the locking mechanism operated by one man - though I feel sure this is a job that one man on his own would have done...

 

[Compound2632]

Although this drawing is dated 1944, it is in all essentials identical to the 1887 RCH drawing in the Ince book and the arrangement shown on Midland and LNWR drawings.

[MarcD]

Firstly health and safety is relitively new. I was told that doors were opened by hitting the dog clip and letting gravity do the rest. I was also told that you could hook the door with a shunter's pole while someone re-engaged the dog clip. However in some hoppers the doors had had return springs so when the load had emptied and the wieght of the door became light enough the doors shut. This system was in use from about 1905.

 

Marc

[enginelane]

When I wo key summers at the Coalite plant in the top stockyard there were internal wagon hoppers of LMS design if i remember right. They had flat drop down doors. When loaded you had to get the shutters pole up under the door spragged against the underframe and push up to take the weight of the door enough to take out the pin. Quickly withdraw the pole and move quickly out of the way of else get Coalite peas in your boots. Closing meant swinging the door up with the pole, holding up and quickly refitting the pin. They were not the favourite wagons to unload and must have been very difficult when loaded with more weighty materials than Coalite.

[jim.snowdon]

Very interesting, but the doors on hopper wagons may have been rather easier to get at. I have to admit an equal fascination for quite how they got the bottom doors on ordinary mineral wagons closed, especially as the door closes up close behind 12" of solebar and the brake gear is in the way of any decent access.

 

Jim

[enginelane]

Yes, there was more ironwork around to sprag the pole under. I think in both cases with a full load the issue for me would be how you took the load off the door to release the catch or pin 

Edited May 22, 2019 by enginelane

[jim.snowdon]

The design of the bottom door catch is such that the weight of the door isn't taken on the pin, but by the bracket the holds the monkey tail. The pin is simply there to stop the monkey tail being pushed inwards unintentionally, so opening the door is a simple matter of removing the (loose) pin and whacking the tail smartly inwards.

 

Getting the door closed again depends on being able to get hold of the door and pull it outwards and upwards whilst holding the monkey tail in until the door reaches the end of its now upward travel. The bit that is puzzling is the last bit of the lift, as by about the time the door has reached around 15 degrees to the horizontal almost all of its weight is being taken by the person doing the closing (assuming that it is done from underneath) and access to the door from outside of the wagon is obstructed by the solebar, which the edge of the door is now close behind.

 

An obvious solution to the problem would be to lift the door from the inside of the wagon, but I can't recall ever having seen any evidence of any means to get hold of the door from above.

 

Jim

[Guy Rixon]

What's the problem with closing the doors from underneath? It doesn't seem much more dangerous than going between the wagons to couple them, as was done with fitted stock.

 

Safety was definitely not paramount in coal depots. I read of one such in South London that was on a viaduct and wagons were unloaded through their side doors over the parapet. There was no walk-way between the wagons and the parapet. A worker had to shuffle along the parapet, hang on to a wagon with one hand while hammering its door latches open (implies squeezing past the half-opened door while it was held only by one latch), avoid the falling door and the ton or so of coal that immediately fell out, then climb up the wagon side and in through the door to shovel out the rest. Hideously dangerous.

[Steamport Southport]

Well I wouldn't be going underneath one when it's on coal drops....

 

There must surely be documents showing how it was meant to be done. They have rules for everything else.

 

 

 

Jason

[Spitfire2865]

22 hours ago, Steamport Southport said:

Well I wouldn't be going underneath one when it's on coal drops....

 

Well once the wagon is empty, theres not much that can fall on you being underneath it.

The doors could "easily" be opened from the side.  

[Steamport Southport]

9 hours ago, Spitfire2865 said:

Well once the wagon is empty, theres not much that can fall on you being underneath it.

The doors could "easily" be opened from the side.  

 

I mean falling the twenty or thirty feet down the drop.

 

https://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/95532-modelling-ner-coal-drops/

 

 

 

Jason

[enginelane]

Unloading any wagon was potentially hazardous. To open the hopper doors a big steel tube was put into the handle and used to lever up wards. Had to be careful not to strain back if door was stuck which did occur as Coalite often loaded hot so metal expanded and became misshaped over time. Doors on the 16 ton and 24.5 ton coal wagons used to swing down very quickly, handrails looking like we’re attached to body but we’re not! 

[jim.snowdon]

6 hours ago, enginelane said:

Unloading any wagon was potentially hazardous. To open the hopper doors a big steel tube was put into the handle and used to lever up wards. Had to be careful not to strain back if door was stuck which did occur as Coalite often loaded hot so metal expanded and became misshaped over time. Doors on the 16 ton and 24.5 ton coal wagons used to swing down very quickly, handrails looking like we’re attached to body but we’re not! 

Yes, but hopper doors were a rather different animal to the flap doors fitted to many ordinary mineral wagons, and the issue was never getting them open, but closed again afterwards.

 The ex-NER hopper wagons that the NCB had, and were still using in the 1970s at places like Blythe would have presented a similar problem, but ought still to be within living memory.

 

Jim

[The Stationmaster]

On 22/05/2019 at 16:04, Steamport Southport said:

Well I wouldn't be going underneath one when it's on coal drops....

 

There must surely be documents showing how it was meant to be done. They have rules for everything else.

 

 

 

Jason

I can't trace any Instructions in the GWR General Appendix - no mention at all of bottom doors, in fact they are the only doors in coal wagons which do not get a mention!    I suspect this was probably because railway staff had nothing at all to do with the opening and closing of them and presumably they presented no operational danger if they happened to be left open (hence no Instruction to check that they were closed)

[Fat Controller]

14 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

I can't trace any Instructions in the GWR General Appendix - no mention at all of bottom doors, in fact they are the only doors in coal wagons which do not get a mention!    I suspect this was probably because railway staff had nothing at all to do with the opening and closing of them and presumably they presented no operational danger if they happened to be left open (hence no Instruction to check that they were closed)

Could this be because the GWR didn't have any locations at which coal wagons would be unloaded by gravity via bottom doors?

[The Stationmaster]

On 24/05/2019 at 15:13, Fat Controller said:

Could this be because the GWR didn't have any locations at which coal wagons would be unloaded by gravity via bottom doors?

I doubt that - there would inevitably have been places where bottom doors could have been opened even if it wasn't normally done.  and similarly there were numerous wagons running over GWR metals which had bottom doors which logically should have been checked at some stage before a wagon was despatched from a yard where coal was unloaded.  The general Instructions in respect of checking that doors were secured therefore applied but nothing additional was shown in respect of bottom doors although there were additional Instructions in respects of end doors.

[Compound2632]

5 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

 there were additional Instructions in respects of end doors.

 

Perhaps the potential for mayhem from 12 tons of coal escaping out of an unsecured end door was rather greater than it dribbling out of a failed bottom door?

[The Stationmaster]

32 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

 

Perhaps the potential for mayhem from 12 tons of coal escaping out of an unsecured end door was rather greater than it dribbling out of a failed bottom door?

Actually it was the other way round - end doors were in certain circumstances, after discharge not required to be secured shut but could be left unsecured.