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Or perhaps the reason the wheels are at a 90° angle, there is no ramp visible, no couplers, and no car numbers, is because these are not railroad cars at all (though they may have been modified from older cars). They're part of the structure itself, in effect movable pockets. The wheels allow the car to move back and forth a short distance and perhaps tilt. Perhaps the cars were filled from behind. But if that were the case, why would such an intermediate step with these cars be necessary? Why not just fill the gondola directly? -j ---In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, <jonathanharris@...> wrote : Those dump cars really are something, aren't they! Are you sure they're side dump rather than end dump with the cars turned 90° to unload their cargo in this photo? I could imagine the grade leading up to this trestle curving off down and to the right, making it invisible in this photo. But then, how would they rotate all those cars? On the other hand, how well balanced and stable on the rails would these cars be if they were asymmetrical left-right instead of front-back? I see no evidence of coupling mechanisms anywhere. Could they be hidden in shadow facing towards us? What strikes me as particularly odd is that these are highly specialized cars with a very unique design ordered and built to perform some specific function. So it had to have been something they cared about, and something they felt needed cars of that peculiar design. Yet the trestle where we see them is a real slapdash affair, not at all typical of company facilities. Hard to reconcile those two. Jonathan __._,_.___ Posted by: jonathanharris@earthlink.net __,_._,___ |