Hi everyone,
I'm planning a transition era layout involving a rural area small industry, town, and yard somewhere in northwest USA. I'm looking at options for how trains might've been coaled.
From what I've read, coaling towers were only used in busy areas, with big locos frequently needing large amounts of coal quickly. In less busy areas what I've read vaguely says coaling was often done "by hand". What does that even mean? Is it actually just some guys with shovels? That sounds like it would take forever to fully load up a tender.
The happy medium that I've seen is the coaling stage: a platform or small building raised up above track level. A coal car follows a siding up into the building, where side doors open and coal can spill or get shoveled out onto a platform, then into a tender, possibly via a chute in a fancy design. It seems like a good solution; cheap and easy to build and operate compared to a coaling tower because it's really just a ramp and platform and track, but you could load a lot more coal a lot quicker than some poor guy shovelling from near ground height.
Example picture here and here, though if you just google coaling stage, there are hundreds of pictures of both prototypes and models.
However, nearly every single example seems to be British. As far as I can tell it is almost unheard of in the USA. I could only find one lonely example of what appears to be a coaling stage on the Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad, here. And the coal wagon cars used in them also seem exclusively British. They're basically short gondolas with side doors. But it seems impossible to find an American example of either the coaling stage itself or the wagons used with it.
What's going on? Were they not used in the USA despite being apparently ubiquitous in the UK? Or has the evidence of them been eclipsed by the coaling tower because that's what was used for the big impressive routes and trains?
Kalmbach's Locomotive Servicing Terminal (pg 14) has a picture of the Gainesville and Midland using wheeled dumpsters to fill a tender from an elevated platform, as well as the Morristown & Erie using a conveyor similar to the picture below
below is a photo of a Philadelphia & Reading facility using wheel barrows to fill tender with coal.
greg - Philadelphia & Reading / Reading
Definitely not "unheard of" in the US. Northern Pacific was into these. Here's a picture of a typical 450 ton version:
Here's another:
Note that NP was a western road, where land was a lot cheaper/more available. These types take up a good bit of room. In a city, that's money.
Ed
Blair Line makes this kit.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
A Google search for Rio Grande Southern Coal Pocket will yield some examples from that narrow gauge railroad. Best-known is probably the one at Vance Junction
Vance Junction coal pocket Google image search
Layout Design GalleryLayout Design Special Interest Group
BigDaddyBlair Line makes this kit.
That's a truck dump for filling hoppers or gons. Most coaling pockets or coaling stages funnel the coal more narrowly to fill a tender.
cuyamaThat's a truck dump for filling hoppers or gons. Most coaling pockets or coaling stages funnel the coal more narrowly to fill a tender.
It wouldn't be hard to modify, though. Chama has a coaling tower but they currently use a front end loader. I'm not sure there were front end loaders back in the day.
Go back before World War One in the US and you will see many more coaling facilities like you seek. After WWI, the tendency was to replace such lumber- and labor-intensive structures with mechnical means to lift the coal.
The coaling dock at Alamosa was not the only facility in Colorado. Until ops stopped to the Gunnison Basin in the mid-50s, the Rio Grande had another at Sergeants. But what's noticeable is that earlier coaling docks at Chama and Durango were replaced by coaling towers during the early 20th century.
If you really want backbreaking, then the very simple coaling stage was even more common in Colorado on the narrowgauge. Just a raised platform, the coal had to be shoveled onto it, as well as off.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
cuyama A Google search for Rio Grande Southern Coal Pocket will yield some examples from that narrow gauge railroad. Best-known is probably the one at Vance Junction Vance Junction coal pocket Google image search
That is exactly it! Excellent.
Thanks everyone
You might want to search the MR all access archives. I recall an article on a small New England coaling facility that consisted of a bucket and davit crane.
Ray
speedybee Hi everyone, I'm planning a transition era layout involving a rural area small industry, town, and yard somewhere in northwest USA. I'm looking at options for how trains might've been coaled.
Except for the Northern Pacific, they weren't. Coaled, that is. They used oil.
The hand shoveled coaling stations were used in the US, but mostly prior to 1880 or so. After that coaling docks, an elevated ramp up to coaling bunkers was used as well as the traditional coaling towers. Smaller locations would use conveyors or clamshell buckets on cranes. Another fairly common US method were a crane with large buckets (1/2 ton to 1 ton capy rivets iron cylinders). The buckets would be filled by hand and then a locomotive could be quickly fueled by dumping several buckets. US engines typically had bigger tenders than British enginesso the "coal stage" method wasn't as practical over here after WW1.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
Hello all,
Hand loading was common in smaller branch lines or facilities.
Often it was done by two men, a plank, a wheelbarrow and a couple of shovels.
The coal bin, adjacent to the track, would have been elevated, so the wheelbarrow did not have to be pushed up a steep incline.
Small conveyors were also often used. (As has been pictured.)
Another method of loading at a small coaling facility was with a bucket crane.
The Crane would be positioned adjacent to the tracks and the bucket would move between a coal pile or coal hopper; placed on a siding, to the tender.
During the transition era (post WWII), with the advent of surplus cranes, these smaller coaling facilities might have employed surplus military equipment over manual labor.
Truck dumps, coal bunkers and elevated unloading platforms could have also been used.
Coal bunkers and elevated unloading platforms might have been too expensive to construct versus a truck dump platform for smaller facilities.
Hope this helps.
"Uhh...I didn’t know it was 'impossible' I just made it work...sorry"
Some time back in the dark ages, MR published a Paul Larson article on scratchbuilding a Wisconsin branchline coaling facility. Coal arrived in gons, was hand-shoveled into cylindrical drop-bottom buckets which were then stored in a roofed shed. When a locomotive needed coal the bucket(s) were hoisted over the tender by a jib crane.
At one Japan National Railways junction (Yoshizuka, Fukuoka-ken) the 'coaling station' was a concrete platform, car-floor height to a drop-side gon. The gons were shoveled out onto a heap on the platform. Tenders were coaled by a half-dozen men with shovels - the same men and shovels that emptied the gon.
I recall seeing a front-end loader on a Korean air base in the 1950s. I presume that civilian versions were available in the same time frame.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with a contemporary Kubota FEL)