Eagle Mountain Railroad - Loading The Ore

Loading The Ore

Loading the railcars with the processed iron ore at Eagle Mountain was fairly simple and required no locomotives to be used. An arriving train of up to 101 empty ore cars would be placed on one of two "incline" tracks. These incline tracks were specifically laid out so that the end of the track furthest from the ore loading tower would be the track's highest point and would gradually drop downgrade to the ore loading tower. When loading operations started, four cars at a time were cut off from the empty ore train and allowed to roll downhill the short distance to the loading tower where they were loaded two cars at a time.

Once four cars were loaded, they were once again allowed to roll downhill to a special section of track called the "Reverser Track". As the cars rolled onto the Reverser Track, they would immediately start rolling uphill until they came to a stop and started rolling back the way they came. They would then pass over a special switch, called a spring switch, that would send the four loaded cars to one of two "saucer" tracks. These tracks were built in a shape of a saucer, with each end higher than middle. The cars would roll into the saucer track and settle at the bottom. When the next four loaded cars arrived, they would couple to the cars already there without damaging the cars and the entire line of cars would be evenly settled on the saucer track.