| Last updated on November 3, 2020
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OROVILLE, Calif. — Observers are watching for what will happen next with the Oroville Dam, one of the largest earthen dams in North America. Few know that the dam is also a great railroad story, one that was captured on video in the 1960s and in the pages of Trains in January 1966.
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I became very familiar with the car dumper and the Orovile Dam cars. In 1968 (or so) these were puchased, the dumper was dismantled and moved to Nelson Point, Port Hedland Western Australia. There were 150 cars, but he special air hoses and automatic uncoupling feature had been replaced by conventional hoses.
The close clearances on the car dumper became a problem. Mount Newman Mining, a subsidiary of BHP Iron Ore (now BHP Billiton) purchased Alco Century 636 locomotives which were only slightly larger than the U25s, but the shape of the cab door was such that it would hit the dumper if left open, and with two cab doors on each of three locomotives that happened far too often. After the introduction of the Canadian Safety Cab, this couldn’t be used because it wouldn’t fit, so all the 636s had the original cab design. When eight GE AC6000 locomotives were purchased, these had the cabs and radiator enclosures tailored to fit the dumper.
I started there in 1975, and a new dumper, with three cells (and better clearances) was installed. Later a third was added, and much later a fourth. But it wasn’t until 2006 that the original dumper was replaced with a wholly new machine on the same site. That’s about forty years, not bad for a device built for a two to three year life.
The Oroville Dam cars didn’t fare as well, although the survivors were still used on a branch line to the smallest mine in 2006. Twenty had been converted to ballast cars for construction of the line, and these were still in use in 2015 on my last visit.
However, all the ore cars are the same dimensions as the original Oroville cars, since they all had to fit the same dumper. By changing the desifn from externally framed to internally framed, the volume has increased from 57.5 cubic metres to 62.5 cubic metres, and since iron ore can be quite heavy, these cars are rated to carry 140 tonnes (154 US tons).
But the dumper, particularly proved to be a great success and played an important part in the development of the largest iron ore export port in the world.
That was a great story!!
In the very best tradition, Trains, THE Magazine of Railroading, is first to report the railroad connection in the construction of Oro Dam. Little has changed since Al Kalmbach released the first issue of Trains in 1940 unless you consider the size of the magazine, computers, and use of color throughout. What hasn’t changed is the professional reporting covering railroading each month by a great team of men and women dedicated in publishing only the most accurate railroad news available. A special thank you to the current Trains staff for this presentation about a modern railroad of the 1960s that’s been largely forgotten in time!