The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

LOADING COAL LNTO SHIPS OTHERWISE THAN BY TIPS 605 Railway Co. is illustrated in Fig. 849. The coal-carrying band is 42 in. wide and 310 ft. long, travelling up an incline of about 20° ; it has a capacity of about ->0 tons of coal, and is fed from a hopper in the embankment under the railway line. The feed on to the band is regulated as in similar previously described installations. The belt is kept clean by a revolving brush, in length equal to the breadth of the band, which is placed in contact with the band immediately the stream of coal has been delivered. The band now brushed clean assumes the flat shape as usual on the returning bottom side, and soon after leaving the brush it is led over two laige drums, its path, while doing so, forming an irregularly shaped S. The object of this is to give the band such a firm grip as to ensure that no slipping is possible while working. The band itself is of the composite kind. Its life is computed at two years’ continuous running under full load, equal to carrying 1,000,000 tons of coal. Guaid plates are fixed along each side of the band to prevent coal from falling off or being blown off by high wind. The whole is roofed in by radial-shaped galvanised sheets, Fi?. 849. Coal-Shipping Plant at Middlesbrough. extending from the tunnel in the embankment to the enhance to the machinery room in the tower. This band is driven by a Westinghouse shunt-wound direct-current motor running at a speed of 750 revs, per minute, with a voltage of 400. The loading jib which receives the stream of coal from the band through hinged connecting shoots is borne at the inner end by two trunnions resting in cast-iron brackets, which in turn are bolted to a pivoted frame. At a distance equal to about three parts of its length, the jib, which weighs 17 tons, is supported by a transverse steel bridle, in the centre of which is carried a cast-iron sheave. Through this sheave is rove the hoisting wire rope, which is led up to a set of sheaves in the bonnet or topmost structure, and is thence taken downward and attached to the cast-iron hoist drum. This drum shaft also carries a worm, which gears with the worm wheel on to which the hoist motor is directly connected. 1 he motor is a Siemens’ series-wound machine of 10 running at a speed of 550 revs per minute. The bridle also carries two stout wire ropes, attached one on each side o the sheave, which are led up to the bonnet in the same way as the hoisting rope, and which, after passing round sets of guide sheaves, have each a line of twenty-two counter- balance weights attached.