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10 | MARINE REVIEW. Brown Car Dumping Machine. Several types of car dumping machines in use at Lake Erie ports have been described in the Review. These machines are used for transferring coal from railroad cars to the holds of vessels. They lift the ears bodily and discharge their contents by dumping them over. Some time ago the Brown Hoisting & Conveying Machine Co.of Cleve- land began the construction of machines of this kind and they now have five of them in operation at Toledo, Huron, Cieveland and Ashtabula. FIG. 1.--CAR IN DUMPING POSITION. The Brown company's machine is probably the most elaborate and costly apparatus of its kind as yet constructed. Numerous changes and alterations haye been made in it, asin all new machinery, and on this account the manufacturers have not as yet authorized the publi- cation of a description of it. The Railway Review of Chicago managed, howeyer, to secure photographs of the machine on the dock of the Cleveland & Pittsburg Railroad at Cleveland, and we are indebted 'to the publishers of that journal for the accompanying engravings. es The plant consists of three independent parts, one being used for dumping the contents of the car into a series of buckets and the other two. for transferring the buckets 'to the hold of the vessel, dumping them and returning them to be refilled. The cars to be unloaded are placed by a switch engine at the head of an incline which leads to the machine. The cars are started down this incline by the use of a pinch bar, and run by gravity beyond the switch shown in the fore- ground of Fig. 1. They are then propelled by a small push car shown in a pocket between the rails in Fig. 1. This car is driven by means of a cable and winding drum and by it the loaded car is pushed onto the machine in the position shown in Figs. 2. and 8. The car is then FIG. 2.--CAR READY FOR DUMPING. firmly clamped and by means of hoisting cables carried to the position shown in Fig. 1, when its contents are discharged into a series of six buckets. There are eighteen of these buckets and they are divided into three sets of six buckets each, each set vesting on a small six- wheel car. These are carried on a short track and shifted by means of acable and winding"engine to and from a point in front of the dumping machine, The dumping machine carries a set of six pock- ets, and as the buckets stand in front of the'machine each pocket is in line with a bucket. When the machine is inverted to the position shown in Fig.1, each pocket extends nearly to the bottom of a bucket, As the machine is returned to its normal position, the bottoms of the pockets are thrown open and withdrawn from the coal as it rests in the bucket. Fig. 2 shows the general appearance of the buckets, the car on which they rest and the guides which bring them to their proper position on the car. The machines for transferring the coal from the buckets to the hold of the vessel are two in number, being duplicates but entirely independent in their operation. Each of these consists of a traveling crane, one leg of which rests on a track between the buckets and the vessel, the other end being carried by a trestle, shown in all three of the illustrations. The cranes each carry a hoist especially designed for picking up the buckets. The buckets are hoisted one at a time as is shown in the illustrations, the first movement being to bring them to the position indicated in Fig. 8. The second operation is to propel the crane along the track until the bucket is brought into line with the 'hatch, into which it is to be discharged. The next operation is to car- ry it to the extreme position shown in Fig. 1, which is accomplished by means of a telescopic girder which forms a portion of the crane, The bucket is next lowered to the hold of the vessel, the bottom un- latched and the bucket drawn from around the coal. It will be seen from this description that the coal is not subjected to a fall at any stage of the transfer. In passing from the car to the bucket it rolls down from the side of the car gradually into the pock- ets, and as the latter extend to the bottom of the buckets there is no fall in the transfer. In discharging from the buckets into the hold of the vessel the same holds true. Another great advantage claimed for -- FIG. 3.--BUCKETS LOADED READY FOR ORANE. this machine is that a vessel loaded by it requires very little trimming, as the coal isdischarged in a perpendicular line and distributes itself naturally and evenly over the hold. On. large vessels the buckets can be carried to either side of the hold in order-to aid in trimming. The machine was designed by Mr. Alex. Brown. It is operated almost exclusively by hoisting drums and cables, and the ingenious manner in which they are applied to the work is extremely interesting. It is expected that the Detroit Dry Dock Co. will make a record in rebuilding the beam engines of the side-wheel steamer State of Ohio, although the work is practically equal to the construction of machin- ery entirely new. Since the Ohio was taken to Detroit it has been found that she made a complete wreck of her engines. The connect- ing rod let go first with the piston on the down stroke, breaking beam skeleton, beam pillow block, crosshead, cylinder and cylinder bottom, condenser, air pump, hot well and bed plate. The crank pin was bent and one crank twisted around on the shaft. There was also some slight damage to the keelsons, due to the lower half of the connecting rod thrashing around from momentum of the wheels. "A Davidson tow of wooden vessels that passed up the Sault river a few days ago had a combined capacity of about 11,000 tons. The vessels were the steamer Rappahannock and schooners Paisley, Alge- ria, Grampian and Lizzie A. Law. They made the run from Port Huron to the Sault in forty-three hours. Niagara Falls excursion via the Nickel Plate road, Saturday night, June 19, at 10:30 oclock. $3.50 for the round trip. Sleeping car attached. 108 June 17