I’m planning on including an elevated concrete coal trestle on my layout to service a brick plant. The track will be about 10 scale feet above the surrounding grade. My question is, once the hopper has dumped the coal through the tracks into the pockets below (about 10 ft square), how does it get to the boiler or furnace or whatever? I understand how a coal dealer might have trucks or wagons park below for loading, or a larger more sophisticated operation would have a pit conveyor dug below the tracks and skip the trestle altogether, but how did the “little guys” do it? The fire maps for my town show a lot of trestles, pockets, and coal bins at small industries, frequently quite aways away from the furnaces and forges. Did they just use shovels, wagons, and cheap labor? (BTW, although I’m interested in all answers, my layout period is 1961 if that matters.)
Shovels and carts in the early days, rubber tired front end loaders in larger plants and more recent times. I’ve seen a photo of a “coaling facility” in the 50’s of a local shortline, which consisted of an elevated trestle with said “pockets” below, a platform adjacent to the mainline about even with the tops of tenders, and carts which would hold roughly a ton of coal each. The coal would be unloaded into the carts (or shoveled), and the carts dumped into the tenders when needed. Thus, the trestle and hopper car would be higher than the top of the train on the main line. Another facility I visited in the 90’s received coal by trestle, and used a front end loader to transfer to the boiler. So, it just goes to show that not every steam powered shortline needs a coaling tower.