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...........................--- Coal Mine Goals ---
I'm hoping to create the illusion of a train entering a coal mine's loading facilities empty and leaving with the hoppers full of coal. I've seen some variations on this but not exactly this. The ones I've seen the train enters and then disappears into a mountain. Then a loaded train comes back out of the mountain at some point but is pointed in the opposite direction. I want the train to appear at the other end of the loading area full of coal.
NtheBasement has a coaling facility that actually loads the train like in real life. Check it out ( HERE ) as it is pretty unbelievable and in N scale no less. I'm not that talented so will have to try something requiring less in the way of building skills.
My plan is to have two identical coal trains with identical locos and cars except one will be loaded and the other empty.
Above is the basic concept. An empty train enters on one of the two loading tracks. As it enters the facility another train with loaded cars enters on a hidden track that is in the mountain behind the mine.
Out of sight in the facility the empty train makes a turn (where purple and red tracks are) and exits out the side of the facility on a hidden track that is in a small ridge line (bottom left). As the empty train leaves on the hidden track the loaded train emerges on the other end of the facility from its hidden track. The appearance is an empty train entering and a loaded train exiting.
Here is …..
…. a view of just the track work above. There will be a train on the second track but it will be broke in two to allow the one track to exit to the left. The break will be the center of the facility were it will be out of site so the train will appear to be a whole train and not one broke in half. I'll see if instead of the second track being broken it can cross the other track on a custom crossing when needed but will still have to be broken in two when the 'unloaded/loaded' train is in operation.
With DCC I hope to be able to speed match the two trains fairly well. In order to hide the switch between trains the facility has to be fairly large, too large to print with a single print. I've broken the structure into about 5 different parts …..
Looking at the structure from the west (the mountain side) there will be a south addition attached where shown above. It will extend the end of the loading facility to the south over the tracks there.
Looking from the east we see where the south addition attaches and also where the east addition will attach. The east addition will be over the hidden track there where the 'empty train' goes out the south side of the east addition into a shallow ridge line, just high enough to hide the exiting empty train. That track will also be on a fairly steep track that descends quickly to hide the train in a short distance. Since no train will run on this line in the opposite direction a steep downward grade will be OK.
Looking at the structure from the northeast we can see where the loading facility will be extend to the north as it was to the south. Also I hadn't finished putting windows and doors in with Fusion 360 at this point.
With the overview out of the way let's move on to trying to execute it. This will take a while and might never come to fruition but I have invested pretty heavy in it as I have bought 6 locos, 2 sets of identical ones and enough identical cars to make up two 20+ car trains. Two identical loco's are Bachmann GP7's and four are Atlas GP7's that I'll have to put decoders into. If I can get the two Bachmann GP7's speed matched to the Atlas loco's I might run them as helpers.
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