Coke Ovens

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

The area that i model has lots of coke ovens
Does anyone know how they unloaded the coal and reloaded the coke ?
I’ve seen lots of pictures but it always just hoppers setting along side a long line of
coke ovens
TIA

2

As I recall from my youth in Pittsburgh, J & L Steel’s coke ovens were charged from a large over head coal hopper into the “skip” cars that shuttled on tracks over the tops of the ovens. The doors on the roof of the ovens were swung open to allow the skip cars to refill them for the multi-hour coking process. At the completion of the process the door on the front of the oven was opened and the pusher emptied the oven by forcing the back wall of the oven to the front duming the red hot coke into the quenching cars to be shuttled under the quencher for quenching with water. The processed coke was then loaded into hopper cars for transport across the street to the blast furnaces. I believe that the the Pittsburgh plant also processed coke for the Aliquippa works blast furnaces as well.

The complete cycle saw loaded coal hoppers discharge their burden into a lift conveyor to the charging hopper, into the skip cars for oven charging. The processed coke was then pushed out of the ovens several hours later into a hopper type car to be quenched, then dumped and conveyor loaded into hoppers and shipped to the blast furnaces.

Hope this answers your question.

Will

3

Thanks Will
Yes it does help
Wish i could find some photos

4

Check out the website hosted by the C&O Historical Society if you have not been there already.

Stan Cohen’s book King Coal - A Pictorial History of West Virginia Coal Mining is another good source.

Hope this helps.

work safe

5

Thanks Coalminer 3
I have checked The C&O Historical site but the photos only showed the ovens with hopper cars on a siding not he actual loadind/unloading
The book however may be a better source

6

The book is a good source; ten pages worth of material including construction and operation pictures.

What area are you modeling and what time period?

work safe

7

first off what era are we talking…the teens to the 30s? if so…alot of the coke ovens where located on sights of coal mines… there was a track for small little hoppers with side shoots called larries… they would load the coal right out of the mine tipple into the larries and either with a small narrow gauge steam or a little electric motor (some larries where motorized themselfs)…shove the cars to the charging holes in the top of the ovens and discharge the coal into the oven for bakeing…once the coal was baked to coke… and was quentched… they would either hand shove the coke into a hopper or going back befor hoppers into box cars… or have a motorized convarer to load the coke to the hoppers…

csx engineer

8

check out this websight… it has alot of historical pics of coal and coke words… do some digging on it and you will find out what you are looking for…

http://patheoldminer.rootsweb.com/county.html

csx engineer

9

In the June 81 MR (I may be off a little bit) there is an article on beehive coke ovens, including building an in-the-corner module for an industrial customer. This may help you out.

10

Thurmond WVA !940-1950

There were some coke ovens right accross the river on the Southside subdivision

but the only pictures i could find were of ovens at Sewell.

You can see photos at the photosite in my sig line