So I was out pickin up Chic’s today with the newly waxed Camaro.
and I drove down the
Highway for the local Gravel pitt, and to my surprise I see this,
For what purpose is a back hoe on this car? They do have a conveyor a little further down the road.
Explain picture please !!!
They are loading ballast onto the car to be dumped on down the line…
Loading or unloading… Can’t tell from the picture. But it’s fairly common to see excavators and backhoes on ballast cars. What’s really cool is watching someone self load an excavator or backhoe up on to a ballast car! I’m guessing that the excavator is the RR’s not the local quarry’s.
A lot of times MOW will use a excavator to precision place the ballast or rip rap. I worked a MOW ballast train for a month, dumping ballast and rip rap all over the Seattle area. Long dusty days dumping ballast at 1-2 mph…
OK, I have seen backhoe’s self load to rail cars and dump trucks and in and out of deep holes in the ground but how does an excavator self load? I have never seen that. It doesn’t seem likely with only one hydraulic appendage. Is there a video?
[youtube]http://youtu.be/Q1CMSV81_ws[/youtube]
The way its sitting it loaded from the side. Probably loaded from a stone pile.
Terry
Of course there are videos! Here’s one of many:
And if you’d like to see an excavator climb up a tower and do a “handstand”, check this out:
Very cool videos!
HMMMM, never thought about them climbing up a set of stairs.
I was thinking of loading from the ground like the backhoe vids that
Craig just posted. I have seen the one where the excavator climbs the tower
That operator had a fortune in brass in his shorts.
They don’t need special stairs but they do come in handy and are easy to move. Many times they use a stone or dirt pile or a pile of RR ties. I watched a track hoe dig a hole to get a pile of dirt to use as a ‘step’ to get onto a car.
The backhoe can do it alone and they are a bit safer because the bucket and outriggers can be outfitted with guides that keep it from sliding off the car. Either way it is really cool to watch.
Just Noticed that the hoe in the first picture has the tracks across the top of the two sides, 90 deg to the sides. The only way that it could be that way would be a ramp on the other side of the car that we can’t see. Once he has the tracks inside the car, he would have to ramp the gravel to the top of the sides to get the tracks up on top the side rails like that.