The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

536 THE MECHANICAL HANDLING OE MATERIAL mentioned before, without the use of large pits in the ground to accommodate, or form in themselves, a receiving hopper for the contents of the truck, and also to accommodate an elevator well or some other device for getting the material out of this hopper again. Now such underground receptacles are, as every one knows, a source of endless trouble, owing to the ground water which in some cases makes their use all but impossible without sinking iron tanks into the ground. This being so, any tip which discharges a little higher above the ground will save so much excavation, trouble, and expense. These circumstances were the incentive which led Professor Aumund, of Dantzig,1 to design a tip which is on an entirely different principle 2 ; he sets himself the task to construct a tip which discharges high enough to altogether avoid, or greatly lessen, the necessity of excavated receivers, and one which dispenses also with heavy platforms and Fig. 751. Portable Curved Tip at the Hague Gasworks. gears, and which might be used independently of costly foundations. It is an essentially portable tip, which he names “Curved-tip,” as the truck is raised on to the curved rail track until it is in such a position that it will unload by an end door. Tips on this principle are not only built portable and stationary, but also with a revolving upper part or turntable, so that the trucks may be discharged at any angle with the railway track. An example of a typical curved tip is shown in Figs. 751 to 753 ; the first illustration shows a perspective view of a truck at the point of discharge, whilst the two latter show side and end elevation of the same tip. It will be seen from the illustrations that the 1 From an article by Professor Aumund in the Zeitschrift des Vereins deutscher Ingenieure, 1909, page 1437. The author is indebted to Messrs Pohlig, of Cologne, the makers of this type of tip, for the illustrations. 2 Although some of these tips discharge considerably above the line, it has been thought advisable not to divide these descriptions under this and the next heading, though that course would have been strictly correct.