European Railroad Discussion > Sweden/Norway: Malmbana, Bathtubs for the New Kid

Here is the second part to this discussion: http://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?17,3436911

Kiruna Wagon is a Kiruna based high tech innovative rolling stock builder. High tech here means that if they can squeeze extra weight away from the cars they will be able to make the operator carry more ore making significant savings within the life time of the freight car. Kiruna Wagon has succeeded here quite well and it seems like newest class Fanoo, quite similar to LKAB Fammoor is several thousand kilograms lighter, thus making these savings possible. As I visited Kiruna Wagon, I became quite convinced on their ability to innovate too.

But here is the latest in the world of bathtub gondolas: the class Fammrr. All these are owned by Northland Resources who soon will be able to run their third daily 28 car train between from Pitkäjärvi to Kiruna southern junction and from there on the main Malmbana to Narvik. Actually the train is run by Green Cargo as you saw in the previous post.

Class Fammrr is special in that it is to be emptied by tipping the top part practically over (I will send a post of this later). For enriched iron ore powder using bathtubs is necessary, otherwise the Malmbana gravel would be pretty rich in magnetite content in not too distant future :) The machinery to empty the cars needs this huge roll on one side of the car. Unfortunately this adds much weight to the car, which is again wasted from transportation capacity.

For this post, let's take a closer look at the Fammrrs:
1-2) one of the new ore cars is being built from components made mostly at Kiruna Wagon. Robots do a lot of work, but can never replace human finishing touch.

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4) Plate is always important, and will tell us decades from now who manufactured this car and when.

5) Would anyone on this forum have idea what this sign is and why it has triple attention marks?

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6 - 8) The finished products, almost ready to be sent to the world.

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Interesting. I have some questions/thoughts on the fammrr cars.

1. Are the bathtubs open topped ?

2. On the side at the top of the car is a covered pipe. What is its purpose?

3. The bathtubs have to be virtually turned over to be emptied, thereby requiring a mechanism on each car to do the turning. This mechanism apparently negates then weight savings that are being built into the bathtubs.
Why couldn't there be a permanent mechanism at the offloading yard that could be connected to a gear race on the bathtubs one-after-another?

Thanks,

Fritz in HSV, AL, USA

Good questions, I'll try to answer and there will be another two bathtub posts answering part of the question more thoroughly.

navy5717th Wrote:
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> Interesting. I have some questions/thoughts on
> the fammrr cars.
>
> 1. Are the bathtubs open topped ?

Yes, they are. No flying dust though, except with empties.

> 2. On the side at the top of the car is a covered
> pipe. What is its purpose?

It is actually a turning wheel for the tipping over machine.

> 3. The bathtubs have to be virtually turned over
> to be emptied, thereby requiring a mechanism on
> each car to do the turning. This mechanism
> apparently negates then weight savings that are
> being built into the bathtubs.

Exactly my thoughts too. I bet the next bigger batch after these couple of hundred cars one will look different. However, it is not the ore car manufacturer here that has dictated the design, but the so far unidentified German company that built the emptying machine (which will be described later in detail). The Kiruna Wagon own design is ingenious and will hopefully be used with the next rebuild to add capacity in Narvik.

> Why couldn't there be a permanent mechanism at the
> offloading yard that could be connected to a gear
> race on the bathtubs one-after-another?

Please be more specific, I could not follow this idea.

By this I meant a sort of ring gear that would be permanently fixed to one end of the bathtub. A trackside mechanism with a spur gear attached to a motor could be engaged as each bathtub was stopped at the unloading point. This would rotate the bathtub on its axis so that it would be upside down. When it was empty the mechanism would rotate the bathtub back to its original poison, disengage and await the next bathtub.

One mechanism instead of 28.

Hope that helps.

Fritz in HSV, AL

Ok, basically the U.S. system then. More like what the Finnish Metso built machines in U.S. employ and somewhat like what the Kiruna Wagon system in the future would employ. I was actually hoping they might buy that kind of system for Narvik too, but this time it did not work that way. But even the current emptying process is extremely interesting, with all these 28 parts needed ;)


navy5717th Wrote:
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> By this I meant a sort of ring gear that would be
> permanently fixed to one end of the bathtub. A
> trackside mechanism with a spur gear attached to a
> motor could be engaged as each bathtub was stopped
> at the unloading point. This would rotate the
> bathtub on its axis so that it would be upside
> down. When it was empty the mechanism would rotate
> the bathtub back to its original poison, disengage
> and await the next bathtub.
>
> One mechanism instead of 28.
>
> Hope that helps.
>
> Fritz in HSV, AL