Did not know about the additional trains for foreign ore. I believe I read somewhere that the bentonite cars were picked up on the way down at Birdsboro and that sometimes the foreign ore was added there too, and that may have often been in Pennsy or PC hoppers. That would all be considered hearsay, by the way. (not to be confused with heresy for having the Pennsy cars on the Reading LOL)

In your plan would you just swap cars at the mine or would you task the operator to shove them through the loader? at hump speed of course.....

To unload the incoming ore cars (which in turn would be at Grace to be pelletized) would they be required to be placed on the shaker. It looked like that could only handle two maybe three cars at a time, and was a fairly short siding, not a pull or push through?? (from photos I looked at)

Hoppers with foreign ore included Pennsy, B&O, Reading, and no doubt NYC. The second shaker in the photo was installed in early 1967. Second attempt at adding the photo.

Here is the photo of the Car Shakers in action. Having lived (and still live) within sight of the mine, I will tell you that those shakers made a terrific racket.

Well, you've got us all peekin on grace mine here Bill, how bout posting what you have so far for a track plan...

On the topic of Grace Mine has anyone picked up the new offering from John Pechulis Media - Anthracite Railroads in the 70's Volume 1: Wilmington and Northern Branch?

johnpmedia.com/mediastore/index.php?main...ath=1&products_id=35

my son picked one up. some of the footage shows some very rough trackage, with engines and cars rocking and rolling side to side.