Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/519

 Popular Science Monthly

��491

��Dumping a Whole Carload of Coal at a Time

THE speediest way of loading coal from a freight-car into a steamer is embodied in a mechanical loading plant installed on a Avharf at Char- leston, South Carolina.

Instead of unloading the coal from the cars and stack- ing it to await the steamer, then retransporting it to the steamer's hold, the car, filled with coal, is merely lifted bodily from the track by a powerful elevating mechan- ism and its contents poured

��Machine Fills Cracks in Pavement

FILLING in the cracks between pav- ing-stones is a process known as "grouting," and proper grouting, when done by hand with the aid of a wheel-

����into a great chute, from wiiu ii ii streams into the hold.

Thirty coal-cars, each with a load of one hundred tons, can be handled in an hour. The entire plant is electrically operated. In ac- tion, the elec- trical loader is spectacular. The loaded cars roll down an incline upon the eleva- tor. A motor is started, the car swings upward until it is turned l)ottom-side-up, the coal pouring into the hopper, thence to the sliip.

��This giant coals steamers and loads barges by picking up rail- way cars and turning them up- side down over the hopper

barrow and a trowel or a spade, is a slow and time-con- suming task. A compact grouting-machine has been brought out, which, while operated by only one man, is able to do the work better and in less time than a small gang of laborers. Aconcrete-mixing machine is mounted on wheels with a long sj)out protruding in front. As the con- crete is needed, it is poured through the spout and out upon the pavement, whence the cement finds its way into the cracks.

���A machine which fills in the cracks btt.

��lag stones

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