Refilling Coaling Towers

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I posted a question about coaling towers still standing nearly a year ago.

http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/p/157891/1741461.aspx#1741461

Well, the same tower I mentioned in the original post may be cosmetically restored and signs placed around to show people how it worked.

My question is how was one of those refilled with coal? I assume that some of them probably were replenished with coal from a hopper. How was the coal brought up in the tower, by a conveyor?

2

usually hopper cars discharged into a pit adjacent to the tower. From there coal would be delivered into the bunker by a verticle chain of buckets.

3

Some coaling stations used a single skip instead of a conveyor. The skip, of 5 or 10 ton capacity, went into a pit under the delivery track, then was pulled to the top of the tower and upended. When it was at either end of its travel, the only thing visible was a pair of guide rails and a hoist cable.

When the original Eric Stevens articles on building the archetypical wooden coaling station appeared in MR, a coaling tower operator who was used to the bucket conveyor loading system sent in a derisive letter - which was printed either in the same issue or after the skip had been described. (The SPLAT!! was an egg colliding with the writer’s face.)

Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with coaling platforms, not towers)

4

Here’s a model of a tower using a skip car:

Wayne

5

There are several issues that concern railroads all centered around costs. Dismantling or raising a concrete tower can be quite costly and it may be cheaper to abandon it and pay some taxes on it then remove it. That being said it needs to be made safe so that kids and railfans aren;t tempted to climb on it for whatever reasons. That means that most of the external devices allowing access will be removed. The thrid reason is the delay removing one would cause to traffic. Just east of michigan city Indiana Pere Marquette (now CSX) has a very large mainline tower spanning both tracks. removing it would cause massive delays and can not be tolerated.