It’s about time for me to get a coal tower and and water tower for my layout. I don’t have the space on the layout for the “modern” large concrete tower, so I am planning on using one of those smaller wood towers. I can’t figure out by looking at the pictures, how the coal is placed in the tower.
Heljan makes a combo sand and coal facility. JV models and Northeastern Scale models make wood coal towers. Any comments on these would be appreciated.
Would you believe it was thrown up into it, one lump at a time? Neither do I.
There was a conveyor that ran from under one track to the top of the tower. Coal was dumped into a pit and the conveyor carried it to the top of the tower.
Depends on the type of coaling station–towers typically had some sort of bucket/conveyor belt arrangements to bring coal from a storage pit to up in the tower a bucket at a time. The simplest way was to use a coal trestle, which would simply roll a hopper or gondola car up onto a ramp and drop the coal into a tender from above.
Here’s a link to a very primitive coal loader:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/254-41
Here’s a coal conveyor, you could use this to get coal from a pile on the ground into a tender too:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/260-200
If you mean a coaling tower like this one, though:
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/160-45211
then a vertical conveyor belt is probably how it’s done–a bunch of buckets attached to the belt, with a pulley at top and bottom.
Has anyone seen an HO-scale coal conveyor that really works? I have some old working hoppers, and a working coal tower with solenoid-controlled gates, but the tower only holds about one carload, and then the Giant Hand from the Sky has to come down and re-load it.
Can you imagine throwing all that coal up there? Uhhh…thump uhhh…thump…and so on. Worst job ever!
Trainboy
Some had one large bucket which was winched up from the pit.
Here’s a picture of one http://www.michiganrailroads.com/RRHX/CoalFacilities/NYCAugustaMI.htm
I think most of them in later years had conveyers of some sort. It’s also a place to deliver hoppers of coal.
Enjoy
Paul
The links below show the type of unit that I’m thinking about. I don’t see where the conveyor is located on this unit.
Most manufacturers of model coaling towers don’t include the conveyor. Perhaps that’s their way of keeping the cost down and making the kit easier to assemble.
The Campbell coal tower that I assembled quite some time ago included the pit in which the coal would be dropped from a hopper car on an adjacent track. It also included a vertical bucket conveyor that would bring coal from the pit to the top of the tower. Their tower is a model of the existing coal tower in Chama, New Mexico on the Cumbres & Toltec Railroad. The kit is still available I beleive.
Bob Boudreau
From the looks of it, the conveyor was at the back of the structure. There would be a siding along the back of the tower, and a pit between the rails. The pit was built with slanted walls that allowed the coal to drop into an area where the conveyor buckets would fill and be raised into the coaling tower. (In the second tower picture linked, the part of the coaling tower that extends above the main part of the structure contains the conveyor.)
I hope this helps.
The conveyor could be pretty small–on either structure, the little rectangular enclosed area could contain the conveyor. The second photo also shows a coal hopper parked behind the coaling tower, which would suggest that that is where coal is loaded into an underground bin.
In this picture of the coaling tower on my layout, the coal was dumped from the
hopper car on the right. It was the taken up an internal conveyer and deposited in the
tender from above. Dave
(click)
If someone’s already said this and I missed it I apologize, but when I was a kid, I remember some old timers talking about a coal tower that use to be here where I live just out side of town, and they said coal was brought in by train, dumped in a big pile near the tower, then someone would shovel it into an elivator type set up that would carry it up and dump it into the hopper at the top of the tower until needed. I don’t know if this is true for sure or not, but if so, it was probably in the 1920s or 30s. I can’t seem to locate any pictures of it in any of the local history books and no one I’ve talked to remembers it.
trainluver1
Most modern, large, concrete coaling towers used bucket elevators to load the tower, but any bucket elevator would have been a good choice for any coaling tower. Simple and reliable. Used in the mines and throughout the aggregate businesses, so it was well proven and reliable.
I think that they also used clamshell bucket cranes to load some on very primative engine yards. would be an interesting model if one is tight on space. Just a thought
The British have a much cooler way of loading the coal. An elevator lifts up the whole coal wagon, flips it up and over at the top to dump the coal in the tower, and then lowers the wagon back down!
–Mo
Steve,
MR had an June 2004 article on how to scratch-build a coaling tower. Here’s the MR video link:
http://www.trains.com/Content/Dynamic/Articles/000/000/005/163kvqtl.asp
I do like the looks of the old wooden coaling towers. You’re right. Most of the concrete coaling towers available really tower above a layout. (Although, I do like the looks of dave9999’s tower on his layout. It fits it well.)
For that very reason, I recently put together a small Suncoast concrete tower. (You can view it by clicking the link at the bottom of this post.) It only stands about 4" tall, rather than the 11"+ like the other coaling towers. It’s a craftsman kit so expect to spend some amount of time putting one together.
The coal is dropped down through a grate on the service track and a mechanical lift (hidden inside the tower) hoists the coal up to the top, where it slides down a chute to the tender below. The only outside evidence of the lift are the two gears on either side, at the top of the coaling tower.
You don’t have to use a full-fledge tower. Like ctrainzs stated, some of the smaller railroads used steam or diesel-powered cranes equipped with clam shells to hoist coal into tenders or hoppers. Even simpler were ramps along side the track that allowed wheelbarrows to drop coal from above into the locomotive tenders. There were also portable coal conveyors available that would not take up much room on your layout. I guess it all depends on how big (busy) your layout will be and how many trains will be “servicing” at a time.
Steve, a good resource on this topic is MR Books “Locomotive Servicing Termincals” by Marty McGuirk. It covers coaling, water, and sand towers, as well as ash pits, turntables, roundhouses, etc. The find the history of it fascinating.
Hope that helps…
Tom
Dave,
Does your coal tower really work? Or if anyone out there has the same one could you help me out on this?
Thanks,
Duce