.Drawing of 16 Cubic Ft. side dump car

 

The B car was a side dump square car, introduced in the Copper Queen mines pre 1915. The car design came from a mine car used by Old Dominion Copper & Smelting co. There are references to 16, 20 and 15 cubic ft. versions of the car. The 16 ft. car was designed for use in the smaller shafts of the time. While the 20ft cars were made for the larger shafts like the Spray, Gardner and Sacramento. The advantages of the car were that they held a large amount of rock for their dimensions, sturdy construction and could be dumped without uncoupling the cars when used in trains. These cars could only dumped from one side, so care had to be taken to approach the dumping site with the cars facing the correct direction. Like most mine cars they will need to be chained down before dumping. Gerald Sherman, the mine superintend for Copper Queen Consolidated believed the “B” car would replace the rocker dump cars. This would not be so , by the 1930’s the “B” car had fallen in to disuse.Having personally used a similar type of car, one can see that they are better for general haulage than “A” cars, but are definitely not as good as rocker dump cars.