Fueling station for wood-fired steam locos - typical design?

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I’ve seen lots of information on coaling stations/towers for coal burners and fuel stands for oil fired locomotives, but I’ve never found anything on a fueling facility for wood fired locos. Is there a typical configuration? Anybody got pictures?

2

Phil,

Here’s a picture that may be of help:

Click picture to enlarge

It looks like the wood bin can be accessed from both sides.

This can be found in Kalmbach’s The Model Railroader’s Guide to Locomotive Servicing Terminals by Marty McGuirk. Definitely worth getting for your reference library.

Tom

3

Tom,

Thanks. That helps a bunch. I suppose that the wood was manually transferred from the bin to the tender, piece by piece - and that the bin was filled piece by piece from a gondola. Am I off base?

It seems pretty labor intensive, but in that era a lot of work was done manually.

I’ll look for the book.

Thanks again for your help.

4

Phil,

You’re very welcome. Yep, labor was cheap back then and things were done manually. And I think your conclusions are pretty much spot on. My guess would be that the wood was probably cut uniformly for both tacking and feeding purposes.

Tom

5

Another common arrangement was more like a loading dock or platform. The wood would be stacked on top of the platform. That made it easier to load, you only had to chunk or hand up the wood 4-5 feet from the platform as opposed to 8-10 ft from a bin on the ground. It also made it easier to unload since wood could be unloaded directly from a wagon or flat car onto the platform.

Dave H.

6

This may sound goofy but I am pretty certain that the old Buster Keaton silent “the General” has examples of such facilities for the railroad (I think it was a logging line) on which the film was made.

There are several portions of that film on YouTube but not, I think, the shots of the fueling facility - basically a platform if i recall correctly.

Dave Nelson

7

I think I recall seeing them fueling the Hooterville Cannonball once or twice on Petticoat Junction, but I’ve got to admit that the train was not the main reason I watched that show ;). I’m also not sure I trust Hollywood for prototype research.

8

A lot of fueling stations for wood were just a pile of cordwood on the ground next to the tracks. You wanted the wood piled as high as possible so that you were throwing wood DOWN from the pile into the tender.

Today we use a front end loader to get the wood to tender height - but it is still just loading one stick at a time from the front end loader bucket into the tender - by hand.

dd