Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Wednesday 6 October 1954, page 3


TO CARRY CEMENT

GIANT containers introduced by the

Tasmain Railways Department will cut by hundreds of pounds the cost of transporting bulk goods such as cement and superphosphate.

One container will hold nearly four tons of cement, enough to fill 96 of the paper cement bags hitherto used.

It will hold 2½ tons of superphosphate, and like quantities of sand and gravel.

A flat railway truck carries four containers.

The department will make 24 in its workshops.

Weighing half a ton each, they are filled through the top.

On arrival, they are swung off by a crane, and the contents emptied through the bottom into

the consignee's motor

trucks.

In three minutes from railway truck to motor truck, a container would be emptied of its four

tons of cement.

Previously the equivalent 96 bags would have to be manhandled, taking probably half an hour.

Gantries will be set up at many stations to swing the containers down to deliver their contents.

The containers will be first used in nine days' time, conveying 1,000 tons of bulk superphosphate from the Electrolytic Zinc Co. at Risdon, to

Macquarie Plains - a huge job, the cost of which from now will be cut by

half.

* Picture shows a continer

being swung up at Launceston railway yards, and railwayman G. Rushton demonstrating how it would transfer its big load at the opening of a door in the bottom.