I am looking at a photograph of the original roundhouse located in Field BC, it is very large and has 17 bays as well as two large areas one for the boiler works and the other I assume as Shop. Behind the Roundhouse there are four of the octagon enclosed water towers on what appears to be four seperate tracks. What is not shown is the coal loading facilaties. Anyone have any knowledge on the number and type of coal towers that would have been found at that townsite? Is it possible that there was a coal tower servicing each of the four tracks that had a water tower?
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Field BC had one 100 ton capacity Coal Dock. It appears in a photograph in D.M. Bain’s book Canadian Pacific in the Rockies (Volume Five) It stood at the edge of the yard and appears to have two spouts (chutes, what is the correct term?) One was accessed at the side and one appears to be accessed by backing up to the tower on a stub track.
This is smaller than you might expect at such a terminal but the CPR began to use Bunker Oil as fuel starting with the conversion of 90 locomotives including Consolidations, Mallets, and Ten Wheelers in 1912. Amazingly this oil was produced in California and sent by tanker to Vancouver and then hauled inland. However, coal fired Mikado’s were still being built and assigned to the Laggan and Mountain Sub’s as late as the 1940"s. The caption does not state when the structure was demolished.
Which brings up a question I have. From before I can remember until I started to read American published railroad hobby magazines (Trains and MR) these structures were called Coal Docks. Is this a regional term, a Canadian term, or a term for a particular type or model of these structures? This is not the only term I’ve noticed since I came back to reading Trains in 2005, but I will get to others as they occur.
AgentKid
“Coaling dock” and “coaling wharf” were commonly used terms on eastern U.S. railroads in steam days. Maybe influenced by the fueling of steam ships?
I am surprised that CPR did not convert their 2-10-2’s to oil. The newer Selkirks were built as oil burning locomotives.
http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-2E533CE/cgi-bin/text2html/.visual/img_txt/dir_149/h_04439.txt
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I was quite surprised to see how many Decopods and Santa Fe’s were running out of Field. I was aware of the Selkirks of course as they were the galmour engines.
The BC Gov’t archives show plenty of decopods and Santa Fe’s being used as helpers with 10 wheelers, connies, mikes, all the way up to the Selkirks.
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