| 摘要 |
<p>A novel hopper vehicle, illustratively a freight hopper car, has a floor with two longitudinal hoppers and a pair of side-opening doors on opposite sides of the center line of the vehicle. Each door provides a part of one of the hoppers and is pivotally mounted on side sill of the vehicle. Preferably each door is a wrap-around door to provide also a lower part of a side of the body of the vehicle and its pivotal mounting is on an intermediate side sill that extends between the sloping end walls of the body of the vehicle at an intermediate elevation. The body of the vehicle has fixed side walls. In the construction with wrap-around doors the fixed side walls form only a part of the sides of the body. Each of the two opposed doors is connected to a novel door-operating, power-operated mechanism that functions also, as soon as the door is closed to provide a positive locking, preferably a three-point locking, of the door. The maintenance of the condition of the power-operated part of the mechanism is not required to retain the door in the locked condition. As a freight car, the body structure of the vehicle has a novel construction. For each side there are tow lower stub side sills, each of which is located at a truck of the car. The end portions of the intermediate side sills are spaced above and overlie the lower stub side sills. A shear panel is connected to each stub side sill and to the overlying end portion of an intermediate side sill. A shear panel is connected also to each overlying end portion of the intermediate side sill and to the top chord of the body of the car. For the central portion of the floor of the car body there is a longitudinally-extending, inverted V-shaped panel that is mounted above the intermediate portion of the center sill of the car and that provides by its sloping walls the other part of the hoppers.</p> |
