Arnold,
I worked at a coal fired steam plant years ago in Georgia. Back then, the Southern Railway used to bring in 99 car coal trains to that plant. Typically, they would have four engines on the point and three more cut into the middle, along with one of the Southern's remote control boxcars. Those trains would run a "balloon track" around the plant. The cars would unload automatically from the bottom when they reached a trestle. Bulldozers underneath would then push the coal around and get it to where it needed to be for the furnaces (there were two) to burn it. After unloading, all seven engines were put on the point and the empty train left like that. It was an awesome sight, especially with Southern's high short hood diesel road units. They had Southern's red bay window cabooses too.
