I can not believe the length people are willing to go to to try and scare the CHS. Look at this from a realistic standpoint; a full load of people weighs 4 tons, if each of those 40 people weighs 200 pounds. A load of coal or ballast could weigh 25 tons. The drop bottom gons have 12 doors, thus each door is holding 2 tons of material, so when you open a door up to 4000 pounds is suddenly unloaded from a area of less than 10 square feet, and the doors are along the out side of the car. That is a lot of potential energy. If the car was full of people (abot 40) each of whom weighed 200 pounds and they all wanted to be on the same side of the car at the exact same instant, that would represent a shift of 4000 pounds (20 people, because the other 20 would already be on that side of the car) from the outside length of the car to a little over the centerline of the car on the other side. (the bench seats on the car are located against the walls, if people were sitting on one side, anyone else would have to stand basically in the center of the car to be on that side) This shift of weight would occur along the length of the car and not be concentrated in one area, like opening a drop door. I fail to see where anyone would come to the conclusion that people riding on one side of a gondola (high side or drop bottom) would tip it over. The fact that none of GLR's high side gondolas tipped over in 30 years speaks volumes about this. The laws of physics and reality can not be overturned just because you do not happen to like what is going on with the Georgetown Loop.Get over it and move on.
As long as I am on a roll here, C&S #9 IS NOT 120 YEARS OLD!!!!! The only thing on that locomotive that may have come from the Cooke factory in 1883 is one cab support, which is marked DSP&P. Every other part on that locomotive has C&S casting marks. The C&S built the boiler and cylinders in 1900 and the frame in 1917. Even the driver centers are C&S parts and teh C&S built the tender in the 1920's. Of course you would actually have to get within a mile of teh locomotive to notice this. Much easier to sit a criticize it and Marlin Uhrich from thousands of miles away.
Jason Midyette
