This long abandoned structure has always had me curious as to what its purpose was. There are no tracks under or beside it now, but some are nearby, maybe 20 yards away. Anyone have an idea?
JaRRell
Where is it located? Looks like it could be a mine head of some sort.
Nick
Could possibly be a grain elevator. Obviously cars were loaded with something using the long pipe ending in a slide. Are the circular structures on the side water tanks or ???
I believe (guessing) that it is a double-purpose tower for water and either sanding or coaling. Tracks ran twinned, going left and right, across your field of view, and the chute swivelled 180 deg to either track, as required. You’ll see that it is capable of swivelling to the opposite direction from which it is viewed. So, the trains trundled under each tower, probably east on one line, and west on another, stopped tenders under either tower, watered, and then coaled (or sanded, but my guess is sand…don’t see where sufficient coal could be stored ?).
It’s a RR cpaling tower. Try a little RR archeology and you’ll probably find an earth ramp going up and into the small shed-like structure and a trench leading under the tower which would have housed an elevator mechanism to get the coal up to where it could be directed down the chute. I’ve admitedly never seen one that has that “remote” arrangement for the cgute but kick around the weeds and see if you can’t find where there used to be tracks.
It looks like a coaling tower, for steam locomotives. That would explain no tracks close to it,
It’s located in Macon, Ga. in the ‘industrial’ area not too far from the tracks.
JaRRell
Cool tower,
Go measure it and scratchbuild it for the layout…Put it next to that turntable…
It looks like a coaling tower for steam engines. The other item is a water tank so the tenders could be refilled with both coal and water during the same stop. If you can get closer to it, you should see coal chutes under the center or on the sides of it that could be lowered to the tenders.
There were concrete coaling towers similar to that structure along the Southern Pacific’s Sunset Route through southern Arizona until about 6 or 7 years ago, when they were finally torn down. Many of the old water tanks along the line are still standing. Local water companies are now using a lot of them.
I can see those vintage 4-8-2s and larger beasts slowly coming towards the tower…like it was yesterday… Smoke billowin’ out of the stack, steam jetting from the under carriage, the rumbling sound of the engine and tender behind…slowly…slowly reaching the dump position to get a refill of water and coal…coal then loosed to come rattling down the chutes and crash into the tender…whistles and chimes signaling the end of the process…crewmen signalling with lamps or hand…and then a gathering of huff and chuffs to pull slowly away from the tower…
{How’d I do…anybody get misty eyed??? …}
(Probably not too prototypical, but I tried…)
lol I can just see someone climbing and measuring [:D]
Climb?!?! To heck with that. I just stand in front of the derned thing. [:D]
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=47734
Ray