I will miss your photos when you move Alan. I especially like the stations that fall along the border as the interchange traffic is always fascinating. I have one guy I follow on youtube. He lives near nova goriza on the Italian side, but makes some cross border trips to rail fan. For me, that whole area is really interesting as you can see swiss, austrian, slovenian, and italian train movements due to all the interchanges and right of way sharing for intermodal traffic. [video=youtube;FS2DVxwB3xg]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FS2DVxwB3xg[/video]
Interesting to hear the diesel sound so clearly. We seem to mostly watch passenger trains, powered by quiet electrics. What commodity in those cars? The tarp covers have me thinking perhaps coal?
Coal cars are not usually covered. They could have something which could blow off during transit like limestone maybe. Lots of lumber (trees) are carried in those type of car. Eas-z in Slovenia, Eaos in much of europe.
It would be interesting to watch log unloading from such cars. Seems as though it could be a slow process.
Loading is from raised loading ramps at many stations around the country. Grabs are used as in loading stake flatcars in the USA. Unloading would be the same I guess but they do have end doors as these are usef for coal delivery to power stations where they are lifted end ways to tip out the coal. Not sure this would work with lumber though!
Does make for an interesting mental image to consider, though...along with maybe a rotary unloader for pulpwood?
