How did they unload coke containers?

Some Lionel history on Coke operations.

http://lionelllc.wordpress.com...ar-friday-coke-cars/

Unusual  N&W  coke box car

http://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/br...=/trans/nss/cars/coa

Dan

My favorite way to unload a Coke container is to just chug it down like "Mean Joe Greene" on the 70's commercial...

I knew that was coming, but what could I do?

Dan

Coke is usually unloaded at night with armed guards watching out for narcs.

Since it is likely hidden inside another shipment, any method would work.

My favorite way to unload a Coke container is to just chug it down like "Mean Joe Greene" on the 70's commercial...

I was thinking a rolled up 20.

I don't do that kind...   Just the kind from bottles and cans!

I'm a Pepsi man, myself...

Rusty

The small  bins shown were probably used at foundrys where small quantities of coke were needed per batch  process.  Probably lifed by overhead crane above foundry furnace

These bins that are shown also look a  bit like the blast furnace skips that took the coke from storage to top of furnace  along with ore and limestone.

For ironmaking in the blast furnaces transfer of thousands of tons of coke depended on distance from coke oven to blast furnace. If it was close by then coke would be transferred to the blast furnaces by conveyor belt to storage bins.  If distances were longer then drags of coke hopper cars were used.

The only application I ever saw was in a large eastern petrochemical plant that cracked all the way to petroleum coke in a consistency of face powder and then used the coke to fuel their utility steam boilers. A small part of the output was loaded pneumatically into these containers on a siding for a customer. The ones I saw had pneumatic unloading fittings on the bottom side also, but I never saw one being unloaded.

          --Bob Di Stefano

I believe that the small bins are the individual 'ovens' that would be used in a coke battery (the large structure of many ovens.)  These also appear to be new ovens that are destined to be put into a coke battery (replacement of old ovens that have outlived their useful lives), not individual coke containers that are loaded, transported, and then dumped at a destination. 

In a battery, a loader full of coal moves over the top of the battery, stops over a particular oven, hatches in the battery are opened and coal loaded into the oven. (During this time other ovens in the battery are 'coking'.)  The oven is then sealed and the coal cooked to form coke.  When coking in a particular oven is completed, doors in both sides of the oven are opened, and a ram from one side pushes the hot coke out the opposite side into a quench car.  The quench car is then moved to a quench building where water is used to cool the coke to a temperature low enough so it doesn't burn, but high enough so that the water evaporates.

tom

I don't believe this is correct.  The coke in the ovens is a single batch of about 15-25 tons per oven and close to 1400 degrees when pushed out as a single unit mass falling into a catch car  where it breaks into pieces.  It then must be quenched with water to remove the heat andfinally transported to storage.  In the 1950s most coke ovens were 5 meterand in the 60s they became larger at 6meter height.    Some batteries of ovens consist of 30-50 ovens in one operating unit.     so 1 million ton per year ovens were not unusual,

I also do not believe that these small containers would have held pet coke (petroleum bottoms) in that pet coke is very light and powdery, and would be  covered to keep it dry and from blowing about.