The resolving power of my computer screen isn’t good enough for me to be sure, but it looks as though a cable may be used to winch the cars up the incline onto the flat bed.
When I was an engineering student, in summer 1948 I got a job as mechanic’s helper in the Huntington WV shops of the Chesapeake and Ohio RR so I could be around steam locomotives before they were replaced by diesels. There I saw the winch used to pull dead steam locomotives into the main overhaul building. The motor, drum and controls were all located behind a high, sturdily braced vertical steel plate that was ¾ of an inch or so thick, and the cable was run off the drum through a slot in that plate.
I asked about the armor. Shouldn’t have needed to--by that time I’d had enough physics instruction to know about strain energy. Anyway, one of the guys explained to me that if a cable snaps under the tension of hauling in a locomotive, say one of the C&O’s 2-6-6-6 Alleghenys, the cable ends become wild, lethal animals.
When any locomotive was pulled in with that winch, everybody but the winch operator behind the armor had to get far away or at least behind something massive.
