Spool load direction

[up1950s]

About a half year ago somebody posted a shot on the WUD of a large spool load he did . IIRC there was a comment by me or somebody else that the spool roll ability should be perpendicular . While searching for days on photos of USRA 4-8-2 light boiler seam lap joints I ran across this .

[draskouasshat]

There's less of a chance of a spool loosening the blocking this way. If they were perpendicular, the spools would beat the crap out of the blocking thats only nailed to the car. After hundreds of miles, blocking could easily come loose and roll of the side of the car. Also, multiple spools would have to come loose to lose anything in the way they're loaded in the picture.

[pnolan48]

While in college my summer job at GE involved unloading spools of metal from both railcars and trailers. They came both ways in either transportation mode. The horizontal ones were more dangerous if a strapping band broke. The combined weight of the forklift truck and metal coil could exceed the limit on the hydraulic ramps. I know the factory preferred the vertical ones, as that was the orientation of their loading into the forming machines. While I became very skilled at driving a forklift and placing inventory into the storage racks, I was never entrusted to flip the horizontal ones to vertical.