I would like to know what the capacities are for the three Walthers HO coaling towers.
933-2903 modern concrete coaling tower
933-2922 wood coaling tower
933-3042 round concrete coaling tower
YES**…**I have emailed and called Walthers twice but have not gotten any response so I was wondering if anyone out there had a clue about their size.
Thanks,
Roger Huber
Not sure about the wood or round concrete, but the modern concrete is listed in the instructions as 150 ton capacity. Mine is N-Scale (933-3262), but I’m sure it’s the same.
cheers,
Well, I did get an answer from Walthers about the coaling towers. It was some what helpful but I would have thought they would have a better idea from plans of what they used for the kits as to size. Here’s their response:
Roger,
They are representative of common coaling towers that were found across the
country. They were never designed to a specific coal handling capacity. I
would guess that if you were to measure the various towers and convert those
measurements to scale feet and inches you could extrapolate the cubic yards
of coal that each tower could handle. You would then need to find out
specific weights of coal grades that the railroad(s) you model used and you
could then find out tonnage capacity if needed.
Randy
Wm. K. Walthers
Parts & Warranty Dept.
Roger Huber
I have a coaling tower on my layout and never gave a thought to its capacity, since I was not going to fill it with coal.
A scale ruler and your geomerty reference book will work. With the web you do not even need the book.
Right hand column is the weight per cu ft
| Coal, Anthracite, solid | 94 |
|
|---|---|---|
| Coal, Anthracite, broken | 69 |
|
| Coal, Bituminous, solid | 84 |
|
| Coal, Bituminous, broken | 52 |
Roger, ad educated guesstimate on 933-2903 is some where around 400 tons give or take judging as i have the Titchy Train Group 400 ton concrete coaling tower on my layout and they are roughly the same size.
A guess on 933-2922 would be some where maybe around half that making it 200 tons only guessing on that wood may not be able to hold as much tonnage as concrete.
The 933-3042 is a model of a PRR prototype in Perth Amboy NJ I remember seeing as a kid and my wife grew up there and has pictures of it. strickly guessing maybe 150tons basing it all off the Titchy model. Not very scientific I know but as good as I could guess. Maybe if you did a Google image search you could get a more accurate idea.
Maybe I’m wrong but I thought it might be more prototypical to match the capacity of the coaling tower with the demands of my engines. In actuality all my engines get coaled on the workbench as a final step in the painting process. DUH!!
Roger Huber
Sorry — it took a bit to find the information you needed:
The smaller concrete tower (#933-1042 or 3042) is a 150-Ton capacity design, based on a prototype built for the Chicago & North Western.
The Modern Coaling Tower (#933-2903 or 3262) is based on an Ogle design constructed for the NYC at Hillsboro, Illinois, in 1923 with a capacity of 400 tons.
The Wooden Coaling Tower (#933-2922 or 3823) is based on a McHenry design built for the Soo Line at Lake Villa, Illinois, in 1928 and removed in 1955. I couldn’t confirm the capacity — my best guess is probably 150-200 tons.
As these were commercial designs built by outside contractors, similar towers would be found at many different locations and on different railroads. Typically, the size was determined by the number of engines refueled in a 24-hour period, with some surplus available.
If you’re looking to model the operations of a tower, I know a couple of modelers who use coal cards as part of their operations. Each card represents 10 tons of coal — a 150-ton tower would have 15 cards available when it’s “full.” Each time an engine refuels, 10 tons are “removed” from the tower (the cards are simply moved between two boxes side-by-side). This gives a clear indication of how much coal is on hand, and how soon additional carloads should be unloaded or delivered.
Lance Burton
Senior Writer, Wm. K. Walthers, Inc.
That certainly adds a different quadrant to operation. Figuring how soon you need the tower to be “filled”, how soon to “order” hoppers (add them to operating session), number of cars needed, plus the actual operations of loading the coal tower (spotting cars on loading track). Shoot that almost makes me want to run steam/diesel transition period. If I had the room…(limited to N scale hollow core door). Not to mention having to figure out about how often your locomotives would need to be coaled up and how much coal they would
Lance,
Thank you very much for your answer to my question. I appreciate the time spent researching the towers for me (us). It certainly beats the smart-axxed answers some feel the need to post to various questions here.
The coal card operation is pretty interesting as I’ve never seen it done that way. That’s kind of the reason I wanted an accurate quantity for the towers to make operation a little more fun and authentic. I’ve seen cards used to deliver cars to them, but regulating it by amount of coal discharged is cool.
Roger Huber
What do you plan to use to unload your coal?
These coal towers are for steam engines. The coal is loaded into them with a skip hoist from below track level, and ‘chutes’ deliver the coal to the steam engines coal bunker in the tender. I have the Walthers 150 ton concrete one on my layout’s engine terminal. There are two engine service tracks and a 3 stall roundhouse(Atlas) with the 90’ Walthers turntable. The entire scene takes up about 6’ 6" of space. There is a stub track to the coal dump shed on the back of the tower. Usually old GS gons or small twin bay hoppers will be used to deliver the coal to the tower.
Jim
I’m going to stick with HO scale gravity.
Roger Huber
I’d use imagination and removable, one-piece coal loads. Gravity does not scale down.
Mark