Wagons are empty having just unloaded their cargo of coal at Longannet.
I do not know of any diagrams explaining the process but the hoppers are discharged via air operated doors on the underside of the wagons.

you gotta realize that us north americans are just completely "duh" when exposed to (some) wagons that you hold for normal.

If you say, they just unloaded coal, then here in North America, coal is shipped in open topped hopper cars. The US cars are emptied through openings in the bottom; while the canadian cars - as a rule- have no bottom openings. Because the latter are unloaded by rotation of one or more cars at the harbour.

The new coal gons I saw in the USA were all rotary tippler cars. One end of each car has a rotating coupler so that they can be quickly emptied without seperating the rake (consist).

The same is true of the iron ore cars used between Immingham Docks loaders and the unloaders at Scunthorpe Steelworks. The orange painted end signifies the rotary coupler end.

andersley wrote:

The new coal gons I saw in the USA were all rotary tippler cars. One end of each car has a rotating coupler so that they can be quickly emptied without seperating the rake (consist). The same is true of the iron ore cars used between Immingham Docks loaders and the unloaders at Scunthorpe Steelworks. The orange painted end signifies the rotary coupler end.

You have one more photo you can submit to POTM Alan!!

Yeah! This discussion should really be in a seperate topic!

Actually, I have not taken any photos this month yet.....

andersley wrote:

Yeah! This discussion should really be in a seperate topic!

Don`t worry, it sort of links together!

andersley wrote:

Actually, I have not taken any photos this month yet.....

haven`t taken many myself. Lovely and sunny this morning, and had planned to get a few morning freights on the Chiltern line. However, I overslept!

37055 wrote:

43019 wrote: I hate to be picky, but Bridgnorth doesn't have an 'e' in it... No no your quite right. Well spotted Julian.

No probs, just one of those things like when people spell Avoncliff with an 'e' at the end. Or how Phil Sayer announces Shrewsbury as 'Shrows-bury'. It's not bloody Shrowsbury, it's SHREWSBURY!

As for some people not having any entries thus far yet, I'm the exact opposite, in that I've got anything up to 8 photos I could enter, all taken on Saturday! I could guarentee only two of them would get any votes though, and even that's assuming no-one votes against the traction in one of those. The rest of them I reckon would be shunned right off the bat with the voting. Still, we'll see what happens and what I enter after I go through them with a fine tooth comb later on the PC!