a material transport and distribution consist including an offloading car , a generator car , and hopper cars . the offloading car includes a rotatable conveyor that can offload materials forward of and to the sides of the car . the generator car powers a plurality of hopper car conveyors . the hopper cars include a longitudinal conveyor that overlaps with conveyors of forward - and aft - located cars to enable transport of materials between cars and while the cars are negotiating a turn in the tracks . the hopper car hoppers are divided into chutes with respective guillotine - style gates . each gate includes a resilient panel that flexes to enable closure of the gate without binding on materials exiting therefrom . a control system is provided to manage the gates and conveyors during offloading based on sensed characteristics of the operation thereof . an interlock system is also provided to initiate a cascading shutdown routine when a fault is detected .