On coaling a given industrial site.... Tipples

[Anonymous]

coal tipples

Rotary Coal Tipples

Coaling Towers

[hoofe116]

Vic,

Okay, much thanks!

Les

[vsmith]

Coal tipples are very different from coaling towers, as you found out. Some coal tipples were very large affairs, long horizontal structures designed to load several cars at once, there are also rotary tipples designed to unload hoppers by rotating several cars upside down to unload them quickly.

Coaling towers, however are specific to locomotive facilites, tall vertical structures designed to drop coal into single coal tenders though they were often across muliple tracks so more than one loco could fuel at once. Coaling a locomotive like this could often be a VERY dirty affair, as billowing coal dust could innundate the engine, cab, crew, and anything within a 100 feet. Seen old film of this, Yuck!

Suggest finding whatever old video you can see on it, Youtube has become a surprisingly good resource for railfans and modelers as lots of old films have been uploaded.

[hoofe116]

Gurus,

I have successfully confused myself again. I was laboring under the impression that a coal tipple was a yard structure for coaling engines, like a water tank watered them.

After some research, it appears that 'tipples' were sorters connected to mines that sorted, etc coal and loaded it on gondolas. They were also part of a much larger site than models of the Chama tipple would lead one to believe.

Soo, my question is, what's the yard structure from which tenders are loaded, called? Where might I find a picture of same?

Secondly, (I never waste postage with only one question) it occurred to me that my NG 18" mine RR gauge might also be used to 'feed' coal from a central delivery point (a dump?) to various local high-thermal output sites like the RR's smithy and erecting (?) building power plants, to name two.

What triggered this is reading a 1960 issue of MR, which showed what it called a tipple, wherein coal was dumped through a grate under the rails and hoisted upwards for some purpose or other. Of course, no details were given on actual prototype operation.

Thanks for any help,

Les