Tippler Wagons

[centenary]

Been hearing a bit about 'tippler' wagons as released by a few OO scale manufacturers and thought what the ehck was that all about?

Did a search on Google and this company's video came up. Really awesome way to empty a wagon. Almost the hand of god!

https://youtu.be/Piou196_tCA?si=zosWYxQ92wZgPa70

[Bigmet]

Much more elaborate handling plant than the much smaller 4W tipplers of the steam period. I do wonder about the benefit of tippling over 'gravity powered' underside discharge hopper wagons; I expect it's a 'horses for courses' decision in respect of factors that I can only guess at.

[centenary]

Much more elaborate handling plant than the much smaller 4W tipplers of the steam period. I do wonder about the benefit of tippling over 'gravity powered' underside discharge hopper wagons; I expect it's a 'horses for courses' decision in respect of factors that I can only guess at.

Id guess at speed of stuff coming out of underside hopper discharge especially on larger wagons and the possibility of the gravity induced hopper clogging up \ getting blocked?

[Bigmet]

Id guess at speed of stuff coming out of underside hopper discharge especially on larger wagons and the possibility of the gravity induced hopper clogging up \ getting blocked?

The latter definitely a problem, especially in sustained cold weather with the load iced up. The 'batter plates' on steel hoppers were there for the 'Teemer' to apply his heavy sledge hammer for this very reason.

Now, I have no heavy materials handling experience, so my guess for favouring tipplers, is that it might be the railway operators preference. With a simple open top box carrying the load, no chance of a hopper mechanism failure releasing the load onto the track while in transit, that's one operational risk removed.

[ChrisGreaves]

Been hearing a bit about 'tippler' wagons as released by a few OO scale manufacturers and thought what the heck was that all about?

There is too the N-scale "Barney"
And the Sandusky ski-jump gravity-return loop.
Cheers, Chris

[Phred]

ChrisGreaves wrote:
And the Sandusky ski-jump gravity-return loop.

Wow, so many moving parts to go wrong! Still, it probably unloads more coal than two men and a shovel.

[aleopardstail]

Id guess at speed of stuff coming out of underside hopper discharge especially on larger wagons and the possibility of the gravity induced hopper clogging up \ getting blocked?

The latter definitely a problem, especially in sustained cold weather with the load iced up. The 'batter plates' on steel hoppers were there for the 'Teemer' to apply his heavy sledge hammer for this very reason.

Now, I have no heavy materials handling experience, so my guess for favouring tipplers, is that it might be the railway operators preference. With a simple open top box carrying the load, no chance of a hopper mechanism failure releasing the load onto the track while in transit, that's one operational risk removed.

also it comes down to how many wagons v how many offload points you have - the doors on hoppers need buying, maintaining etc - on a lot of wagons that adds up - the tippler thing is static infrastructure that can be maintained more easily, though with a higher initial capital cost

[Bigmet]

...also it comes down to how many wagons v how many offload points you have - the doors on hoppers need buying, maintaining etc - on a lot of wagons that adds up - the tippler thing is static infrastructure that can be maintained more easily, though with a higher initial capital cost

I can see the relative maintenance costs figuring large in this one; and always ignoring the likelihood that some future clowns 'responsible' for any of this will be seeing how much they can get away with, before moving on and leaving whoever inherits the resulting mess to sort it out. Cynical, moi?

[aleopardstail]

...also it comes down to how many wagons v how many offload points you have - the doors on hoppers need buying, maintaining etc - on a lot of wagons that adds up - the tippler thing is static infrastructure that can be maintained more easily, though with a higher initial capital cost

I can see the relative maintenance costs figuring large in this one; and always ignoring the likelihood that some future clowns 'responsible' for any of this will be seeing how much they can get away with, before moving on and leaving whoever inherits the resulting mess to sort it out. Cynical, moi?

used to work with a firm that did maintenance on wagons.

they worked to a "pence per running mile" figure, averaging planned and unplanned maintenance.

per mile for a box van its a few pence if memory serves, hoppers & tankers are slightly more, not a lot - the bulk of the work relates to the brakes and the costs of getting the warm bodies on site.

this was dwarfed by the track access charge stuff.

I can imagine in Yankaida where they don't have the same insanity we have here the maintenance cost is a higher proportion of the total

here Tippler isn't favoured as there are so many companies involved none individually would pay for it even if overall it would be cheaper

and the freight bit of the UK network is the least insane bit

remember when I was part of EWS they had sidings with stored hoppers, basically as they became due a general overhaul into a siding they went and others were used instead (they bought waaaay too many of the things as the coal traffic collapsed), maintenance was a problem for another day.. one is red carded? siding and find another to replace it

[Phred]

Bigmet wrote:
some future clowns 'responsible' for any of this will be seeing how much they can get away with, before moving on and leaving whoever inherits the resulting mess to sort it out.

It's true - the bungy boss is a real thing! I've suffered from them many times.

[aleopardstail]

Bigmet wrote:
some future clowns 'responsible' for any of this will be seeing how much they can get away with, before moving on and leaving whoever inherits the resulting mess to sort it out.

It's true - the bungy boss is a real thing! I've suffered from them many times.

I've found over many years whatever "initiative" a new boss comes up with can usually be ignored for the first six months

[ChrisGreaves]

Wow, so many moving parts to go wrong! Still, it probably unloads more coal than two men and a shovel.

The Barney looks like the diesel tugs that move ships through the Panama Canal Locks at the 1m 04s mark, just running embedded in a trench instead of alongside the wagon (like a tow horse ...)
The Sandusky site ("It was another time, it was another place ...") possibly reflects:-
(a) cheapness of grunt-labour
(b) limited safety standards
(c) huge profits that could be made from raping the land
(d) unemployment due to recessions etc
(e) cheap immigrant-labour
and other factors.

I confess with my background I assumed that tippler-wagons would be some sort of tiny facility in a Scottish whiskey distillery (grin!)
Cheers, Chris
[later] A review of the Sandusky video suggests a rate of three minutes per wagon, so a 100-wagon rake would take five hours to discharge. I'm still trying to wrap my head about the sequence of the outgoing rake of empties. Does that ruin the schedulers list of wagons in a train, or did they (in those days) just switch between the two sequences? C