Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF coal trains

Does Burlington Northern Santa Fe mix bathtub type coal gondolas with AutoFlood or RD4 type hoppers or any type of hopper cars on any coal trains? I do know Norfolk Southern does mix bathtub gondolas and hoppers on the same train from time to time. Thanks for any answers.

SantaFeRuss

Yes, they do, just depends on the train. But the hoppers have to have a rotary coupler in order to be mixed with the gons.

Tim Stricker
Gillette, WY

Usually when I see this, it'll be a set of gondolas with just one or two air-dump hoppers mixed in. 

More often than not when I've seen this it was one of the double rotary RD4's thrown in with a train of gondolas. Why have a car with two rotary couplers on a train that gets unloaded from the bottom when that one car can ease the unloading of a rotary dump train by not having to uncouple the lead units or DPU? Seems like a good idea to me...
mg8711

The usual set up for a train with the rotary dump cars, is the first half of the train has the car with the rotary end facing towards the front of the train (the color stripe on the cars donates which end the rotary coupler is on), then usually somewhere in the middle is a car with rotary couplers on both ends (or a double striped car) and then the cars on the last half of the train all have the rotary coupler facing toward the rear.

Tim Stricker
Gillette, WY