coal fired power plants

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I am interested in modeling a coal fired power plant. I worked for Combustion Engineering for many years and would like to add a power plant to my layout. Can anyone recall an article in MRR or MRC about this subject? (Model or Prototype) I sure miss the alltime index MR used to have.

Lewis Harris

2

Yes, I worked around them also, but on what you guys called the “rotating pressure reducer” part of the plant. So far as I was concerned, that was the side of the plant that actually made money (steam turbine). But anyway, I digress. As I think you’ll find out, most of the power plants out there are quite large if you think about the acreage they cover. But if you’re willing to go a little smaller, and in a little earlier era than current, you might be interested in this model by Custom Model Railroads: http://www.custommodelrailroads.com/powerplant.aspx.

I did a little hunting around on the internet, and I believe that the model is of the Willow Street Power Station in Philadelphia. The actual facility appears long out of commission and a little (or a lot) ratty looking. You can see the remains if you go to WWW.Bingmaps.com and put “9th and Willow Streets, Philadelphia, Pa.” in the search box.

Regards

3

Check out “The Model Railroader’s Guide to Industries Along the Tracks 2” by Jeff Wilson, published by Kalmbach (they just came out with #4). It has a chapter on “coal customers” that has good photos and information.

If you Google “Lakeside Power Plant Milwaukee” you will find information and images about a relatively compact power plant that operated from about 1910 - 1970. it had its own electric railroad and right of way, and it had interchange with both the C&NW and the Milwaukee Road (the latter through a surprisingly long interchange track that extended west several miles). And of course it also interchanged with its own owner’s electric street railroad. There are also many images on Google.

Dave Nelson

4

I grew up near a Penn Central branchline that served two coal plants. PC used Alcos and F units for power on the locals, and SW1500s to switch loads and empties at the plants. The local utility had GE switchers to move cars through the unloader.

PC F7’s on local - southbound toward Rochester with empties

RG&E Beebee station - note GE visible through the unloader

RG&E Russell station - GE 44ton switching hoppers

NY Electric & Gas has had two coal-fired plants that I visited. One near Bainbridge is/was located along the former D&H north of Binghamton. The other was along the west side of Seneca Lake at Dresden, which changed hands a couple times. Both plants were switched by Plymouths.

Bainbridge plant

Dresden plant switcher

There is a plant operating along Lake Ontario with its own railroad and an interesting bit of trackage to get coal off CSX down from the Niagara Escarpment. The Somerset Railroad has its own fleet of hoppers and a rotary dumper.

All to say, there are many options for modeling a coal-fired power plant.

5

Get real dude! You can’t build a coal fired power plant . . . . . at least not in the first decade of the 21st Century. Have you been asleep for the past 2 years? B. O. has promised that if you build a coal fired power plant he will tax it out of existence quicko pronto!

6

DPM makes a small coal fired power plant that is a good start for a compact power plant site. I have the model still in kit form but made a cardboard mockup for placment on my layout. See photos, it is the brick color building behind the large gray building. I also pasted the listing from walther’s site.

The Powerhouse 11-1/4 x 5-3/4" 30 x 14.9cm
Walthers Part # 243-35600, p. 519 Walthers 2010 HO Scale Reference
HO scale, $59.99, currently in stock at Walthers

Bob

7

DPM makes a small coal fired power plant that is a good start for a compact power plant site. I have the model still in kit form but made a cardboard mockup for placment on my layout. See photos, it is the brick color building behind the large gray building. I also pasted the listing from walther’s site.

The Powerhouse 11-1/4 x 5-3/4" 30 x 14.9cm
Walthers Part # 243-35600, p. 519 Walthers 2010 HO Scale Reference
HO scale, $59.99, currently in stock at Walthers

Bob

8

Google "coal fired power plants

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=ie7&q="coal+fired+power+plants"&rls=com.microsoft:en-us:IE-SearchBox&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&rlz=1I7TSNA_enUS380US380

It might be a place to start.

9

Wright Patterson Air Force Base, near Fairborn Ohio has several small coal plants. They produce steam to heat many of the facilities on base. These were all completly re-built in the 1970s & 80s. They each handled a dozen or so of carloads of coal a day, more or less, with more in the winter. They all were connected to the CCC&Stl and Erie, (NYC<PC<CONRAIL<now NS), but I do not think that they receive coal this way now, and may have converted to gas. In any casy you can Google Earth the facility and see how a modern small facility looks. They switched the cars with GE 44 ton locomotives, and they also had one S-2 or S-1, I am not sure which. All the coal piles,conveyors, burners etc are there, and you could certainly add a generator building, as it was a steam heat plant, but a small facility none the less.

Paul

Dayton and Mad River RR

10

Thanks for the location [:)] That does look like it. I couldn’t get pics or satelite from Bing (any suggestions please?) but got this on Googlemap - http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en&q=9th+and+Willow+Streets,+Philadelphia,+Pa&um=1&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=N+9th+St+%26+Willow+St,+Philadelphia,+PA+19123,+USA&gl=uk&ei=NiD6TMyPM8aXhQfflNz3Cg&sa=X&oi=geocode_result&ct=image&resnum=1&ved=0CBwQ8gEwAA

Looking around the area it looks like there’s abandoned tracks to the west and the lines to the north either hit a brick wall or go under ground. It also looks like overhead territory - on both routes. Does anyone know if the rail feed to the power plant was street running… it looks long gone and built over in the satelite pic.

Thanks

[8D]

EDIT…

OOPS! Someone had already given that link but…

I found this - http://www.workshopoftheworld.com/center_city/willow_steam.html

which says that cars were delivered along Willow Street, the plant was for area steam but not electricty and that it’s sealed up by the Fire Dept because o

11

  • Coal-fired on Mississippi River BN N-scale “project” layout

  • Mod RRer Feb90 p.97: Mod RRer June90 p.92

  • coal-fired: “modern coal burning powerhouse”. coal board ad. Business Week_ Aug 6, 1955 p.155

  • cooling tower, 44,000 gallons of water/minute, for Kansas Power & Light pix BusinessWeek Aug 25, 1956 p.14

  • Duke Power Co. turbines, Riverbend steam station, Business Week Nov.19,1955 p.24

12

If you put 9th and willow streets, philadelphia, pa in the bing maps search box, you can zoom in to the street location. Then if you look at the menu line across the top right of the map you should see something that probably says “road view”. If you put your mouse on the word road (you might have to click once) you’ll get a drop down menu. Select “birds eye” and you should see the picture.

13

I currently work at a coal fired plant. We are serviced by Norfolk&Southern which delivers low sulfur coal from the Powder River Basin. We use a rotary dumper to unload cars one at a time uncoulpled. The coal leaves the dumper and is conveyed to a large storage pile that sits over underground hoppers it then gets conveyed up to the plant to storage silos. Our plant was built in the early sixities and is a corregated type building.

Mark

14

Thank You.

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Thank You!