Fig. 24. Fig. 24, a.
The latter plan has the great disadvantage that only one car at a time can be loaded and only a few men (six to ten) can be employed. Therefore this plan is never adopted where quick work is required, but is used only where ample time is available, and mostly as an early spring preliminary job, preparing the way for the operation of the steam shovel later in the season. From three to six flat or coal cars are used, enough to require a whole day for the gang of men employed to load; the material from the face of the excavation is loaded on wheelbarrows, and wheeled over the empty cars to the one farthest from the cut. This car is loaded first, then the one next to it, etc. At night the loaded cars are taken out of the switch by the first available freight train and hauled to the nearest yard or side track where widening of the embankment is wanted, or where the material can be otherwise used to advantage, and there unloaded by a small gang of men on the following day; the cars to be returned again the next night. Other empty cars are placed in the pit track for loading next day, by a train bound toward the pit the same night the loaded cars were taken out. The work can be carried on from either one or both ends of the cut. Coal cars should never be used if flats can possibly be obtained, as the latter can be unloaded by a gang of men one-third as large as would be necessary for unloading coal cars.
Fig. 25. Fig. 25, a.
Sometimes small dump cars are used, drawn by horses or mules, and the material unloaded at the end of the cut, thereby widening the embankment for a long side track, [Fig. 25]. The narrow gage track, A, is laid over the ditch adjoining the main track; the material for any slight excavation that may be necessary for this track is shoveled on the slope of the cut, as at C, on the cross section. The material is then loaded on small dump cars standing on track A, and unloaded at D. The cars are returned on track B. The cross-overs, E and F, are taken up occasionally and relaid near the advancing ends of the cut and dump.
In short cuts the narrow excavation necessary for placing a side track in the cut for the steam shovel to load on is generally taken out by carts and dumped at the ends of the cut, widening the embankment for a long side track.
The plan of excavation with wagons or wheel scrapers for this side track, shown in [Fig. 23], is adopted where the traffic is too heavy to permit loading on the main track; when the side track is wanted at the earliest possible time; and in cuts not over 40 ft. deep. The material is dumped at the ends of the cut until the haul becomes too long, then it is taken to the top of the cut over sidehill driveways excavated for the purpose, and unloaded at a sufficient distance from the edge of the new cut to prevent its washing back by rains.