Construction
The typical construction of an ore dock is a long high structure, with a railway track or tracks along the top with a number of "pockets" into which ore is unloaded from cars, typically by gravity. Each pocket has a chute that can be lowered to discharge the ore into the hold of a ship berthed alongside. The use of pockets and chutes allows loading the dock asynchronously of its discharge into the freighter.
The docks storage bins or pockets typically are wider at the top than the bottom, and lead to movable steel chutes. These chutes project out over the water at a slight angle from the sides of the docks. The hinged chutes, which when lowered allow ore to drop into ships from the pockets, are located at twelve-foot intervals over the length of the dock.
This spacing is not coincidental, as the docks and the lakers they could load evolved together, and laker hatch spacing is typically 12, or 24-foot (7.3 m) on center.
Read more about this topic: Ore Dock
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