All I Want For Christams is an Indexer

[regme]

Hi

I chasing some plans, parts list, anything really, to start putting together an indexer for a rotary car dumper.

I have come across some good infomation on line, but northing to really show me how to do this, so if anyone has an info that would be great.

Merry Christmas

 

[kjd]

https://model-railroad-hobbyist.com/node/33009 On the same site look up Mad Doc and Nickel Queen for another take on indexers. I think I put a link to one of their posts in my post about the indexer.

This indexer is mounted on a linear bearing and is mostly aluminum. The motor cover, the squarish box on top is plastic but the rest is aluminum. It is driven by the cable in the photo and that is moved by a small N20 gear motor with some other gears adding even more reduction. It is capable of moving a 30+ car train with 3 SD60s sliding along at the head end. That is not normal, I usually uncouple the locomotives, but it has happened. The indexer is on the empty side of the dumper (hiding in the cardboard building) and moves the cars to the right in the photo.

The brass square in the track is part of the brake that holds the cars in place as the dumper returns. If it wasn't there, when the indexer arm raises the cars rebound slightly and the indexer arm doesn't line up with the coupler when it gets back to the start. There is another arm on the other side of the dumper that puts a little tension on the cars to keep the couplers stretched while dumping which greatly reduces unwanted uncouplings.

The festoon cable in the background is a work in progress. There are tiny rollers on the plastic hangers. They fit into a slot I cut into the bottom of the brass frame. The loose wire powers the indexer arm motor and is supposed to be attached to the last loop in the festoon cable track but when I last operated the indexer it pulled out. I'm planning on adding the rest of the legs to the frame and painting it so I didn't reattach the wire yet.

The indexer can be seen working in this video:

 

[regme]

Thanks, I saw your post, very interesting. Just need to woek out how to it.

There maybe be a lot more questions to come.

Cheers

 

[kjd]

A few drawings will help tremendously when trying to work it out . When I did mine, I drew, by hand but to scale, a plan view and an elevation from the end. The elevation view should have your ground, the rail height and coupler height. That way I could see how much vertical room I had to work with. The plan view will help work out where things should go. To minimize torque on the mover arm, it should be as short as possible. But not too short as the mover body needs to clear the train as it returns to grab another car.

There are some videos on YouTube of rotary dumpers and sometimes the indexer can be seen in the background. I also searched for them in different languages, for example "virador de vagoes" finds some ore handling facilities in Brasil that don't turn up when searching in English.