Working rail roads and their tracks.

[MossRoad]

Through work I’ve worked on a couple of rail projects, I think they were always sidings so switches are involved. I always heard the term FROGS thrown around. It’s where the rails come together. I Googled it and it resembles the underside of a horses hoof. It sounds like the term goes back many years.

My dad was a demolitions officer in WWII. I have his Army field manual on blowing things up. In the RR section it talks about frogs and where to place the charges for maximum damage with minimum materials. I read it around 12 years old, I believe.

I did not know how it got its name. Thanks!

 

[ArlyA]

We are kind of getting into lake shipping here.... Here is the iron dock in Two Harbors MN loading the Walter J McCarthy which is a 1000footer. The pile of pellets you see is the reverse they build up over the winter. Seems they using two loading sysyem here. Conveyor and the dock pocket system.

 

[jjeff]

Before more modern conveyors didn't they use "hopper" cars on the ore docks?

 

[jjeff]

Ahh the googler said they are called "Jennies" still used occasionally.

Iron Ore Rail Cars (Trains): Capacity, Length, Photos

Ore jennies are specialized type of hopper car designed specifically to handle heavy taconite and as a result are much smaller than their larger cousins. Read more about the car's history here.

www.american-rails.com

 

[ArlyA]

The ore cars or "Jennies" still load the pockets. Marquette docks still does this but the more modern ones have switched to conveyors. Hopper cars is how they move from the pellet plants to the docks at all locations.

 

[ArlyA]

Here is the CN ore dock in Duluth taking in a train . It kinda give you an idea, just how big these operations are. There is a conveyor here, but that's just to load from the reserve stock pile.

 

[jjeff]

Wondering if some folks can tell me how they switch the "Jennies" out on the oredocks meaning when the first few are done unloading what happens to them so they can continue to unload "Jennies" towards the back and how did that engine in previous video submitted by Mr Arly pull that load out on an oredock and appeared to do a three point turn and come off that oredock forward? I'm sure theres not a roundhouse 1k feet out on the lake? A railroad illiterate person like me has only ridiculous humorous ideas of what happened in that matter.

 

[bcp]

From abour 4:50 to 6:00 on the video at post 2474, The front and rear locomotives are facing opposite directions. They uncoupled, pulled ahead, then the crew could move to the rear, now lead locomotive, and run it "forward." Or that may have been a backing move to the rear of the cars. I didn't see a crew move.

Bruce

 

[MossRoad]

Wondering if some folks can tell me how they switch the "Jennies" out on the oredocks meaning when the first few are done unloading what happens to them so they can continue to unload "Jennies" towards the back and how did that engine in previous video submitted by Mr Arly pull that load out on an oredock and appeared to do a three point turn and come off that oredock forward? I'm sure theres not a roundhouse 1k feet out on the lake? A railroad illiterate person like me has only ridiculous humorous ideas of what happened in that matter.

Not sure what you're asking.

Take a look at the dock from above. Maybe that'll answer your question?

There are double tracks out to the dock.
There is a switch between the double tracks before it goes out over the water.
In the video, the train pulled the cars up to the switch, dropped them there, switched over to the other track and went to the far end of the train.

My guess would be that they then pushed the Jennies out onto the dock as far as the ship is long, dumped the contents of those Jennie into the corresponding hoppers, then pushed it out further out onto the dock and repeated.

If they got to a point where they still had more Jennies to dump than the dock is long, they'd break the train, pull the empties off onto the other track, and then push the remaining full Jennies out onto the dock.

See screen shots below.

The switch


The dock used to be 4 tracks wide, but looks to be 3 now.


The hoppers under the tracks with the chutes to dump into the ship.


The entire length of the dock compared to the ship.

 

[MossRoad]

Looks like the 3rd track that is no longer used has the conveyor over it. You can see where it comes from the reserve pile, out to the dock, then travels both directions, towards shore and towards the water.