Hopper Car Door Opened Up and my Track is Full of Coal

I just have to correct your hydraulic terminology. You said a hydraulic pump was driving the unit. Not true. That is a hydraulic motor which is being driven by hydraulic fluid that is pressurized by a hydraulic pump. Former hydraulic mechanic.

I can remember as a very young boy walking along the railroad and picking up coal from the old steam engines for my grandparents stove. That was before diesels on the New York Central route through NW Ohio. NYC had 4 tracks in front of their house - two for "locals" and heavy freight and 2 for "high speed" passenger and express freight. That is how a lot of the families in rural areas survived the depression!

I had something similar happen at a mine in Alberta. A car came back missing one of the doors, the train crew and the operator didn't notice and loaded the car anyway. Fortunately the operator did notice the pile getting smaller and smaller as the car moved away from the loadout and stopped the train. Took about 8 hours of hard work to clean up the spill and limp the car over to the B/O track. As far as I know the missing door was never found, it must have come off out on the road or perhaps when the car was unloaded at the port of Prince Rupert. It could have been worse, the same mine has had several derailments over the years that were caused by spills between cars, the next empty car will then ride up on the coal pile and walk off the track.

Top notch rail cleaner I must say. Your mother would be proud. Keep up the videos.

My mother from Pittston Pa told me how my two uncles used to have to walk along the track to get coal to keep the house warm during the Depression. Years later my uncles told me how they used to climb moving trains to throw the coal out on to the tracks.

Several years ago the Ann Arbor Railroad had a grain hopper open up and dump grain for miles. A short time later the grain sprouted and it looked like a layer of light green carpet in the middle of the tracks had been laid.

Great video! I've never seen one of these in action. Thanks for the tour!

The last coal train derailment we had back in 2013 in the yard, we hired a VAC Truck contractor and they brought 3 vac trucks to vacuum 2 cars worth of coal off of the tracks, one of their trucks they brought has hyrails.

Thank you for the great time in the cab

Dang gremlins! If a feller ain't got enough to do. Well Dave as always you made the most of a bad situation and created us another good video. Thank you sir!

Unlike the movie Groundhog day at least you don't wake up to the same problem every day. The way the coal was flying off to the side I thought a dog was underneath trying to dig under a yard fence. In the early 1970s I remember passing thru some northern Illinois rail yards where silicate sand was always leaking out of old covered hoppers due to grates not fully closed. Every 20 or 30 feet the wheels would have to cut thru another mini Egyptian sand dune. Never a dull moment in the maintenance dept

I really appreciate the spring/summer videos this time of the year. It helps my outlook, when all I'm seeing is snow and ice in Western Maryland. Stay safe my friend.

Dave it was great to get to ride along and learn all about the brooming operation. What a mess having the hopper car door break open. That looks like it will be quite a repair process to drop that door out to fix it. Hope you can get the remainder of the 3 mile stretch cleared and back in full operation. Thanks again for taking us along!

The good part was the class on how the broom works,the bad part was all the extra work you had to do.Great video Dave.

Hey Dave !! WOW !! How lucky you guys were there as NO derail !! Have a good time sweeping !! HAHA Till the next Event ,, "",KEEP IT WARM"" !!

Didn’t know a broom machine existed. Pretty interesting. Thank you for posting.

Didn't even know one of those existed you learn something new everyday

Always something interesting Dave, always something interesting. Thanks!

Very interesting video. Always something new and fascinating on the railroad.

I was gonna say it's awfully green for Pennsylvania this time of year but them red the description. Thanks for sharing with us Dave.