Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/849

 Unloading Freight Cars by Machinery

No worry then about shortage of labor

��SOME of the con- gestion of rail- road traffic since the outbreak of the war has been partly due to the detention of loaded cars in rail- road yards or on sid- ings. In many cases companies pleaded that the scarcity of laborers made it impossible for them to unload their cars promptly. Hence, mechanical unload- ing of freight and coal cars has be- come of vital importance.

Recently a Chicago inventor put on the market a mechanical unloading device, which, he claims, will not only mean a large saving of labor but also re-

���Acceleratin;_, iIl mloading of railway cars by the use of endless-chain buckets

���The traveling belt (at left) receives its burden from V buckets unceasingly and depKjsits it where wanted

��duce the cost of un- loading to one-third of what must now be paid to shovelers. The device consists of an endless-chain bucket elevator carried by projecting arms which are counter- balanced by a con- crete block at the opposite end and mounted on a piv- oted frame supported on a traveling bridge or crane which strad- dles the car and can be moved from car to car as the work proceeds.

One man is sufficient to operate this machine, which, according to the mate- rial, will unload from thirty to forty tons an hour. At that rate one operator with this machine can unload five cars in one day. To do the same amount of work by the old method would require about ten or twelve men.

The bucket -chain elevates the material to a horizontal belt which deposits the material re- moved from the car wherever it is wanted. Both conveyors are operated by small electric motors controlled from the operator's cab.

The entrance of the United States into the war has acted as a stimulus to inventive genius, and since the war necessarily removes from ordinary channels of labor a large percentage of men, any device that holds out promise of usefulness in sub- stituting mechanical labor for that of man is worthy of more than passing consideration. If this inventor's claims are sub- stantiated, one of the most serious causes of delay in freight-handling will be elimi- nated.

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