The VIA station in Brantford Ontario also has a brick breezeway between the main station & the Express building, now housing an art gallery/coffee shop.
And yes, my high school track in the '70's used cinders.
By the end of the '60s, the supply of cinders would be running pretty low, what with the disappearance of steam power on the railroads. I would guess gravel would have mostly replaced replaced the cinders by then... As an interesting note, the highway departments of many midwestern states used cinders as a way to both provide traction and melt ice in the winter in accident-prone spots on rural highways. They were kept in wooden boxes near where they would be used...
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Gary M. Collins gmcrailgNOSPAM@gmail.com
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"Common Sense, Ain't!" -- G. M. Collins
http://fhn.site90.net
Thank you all for your replies. As for bricks, the passenger station in Stratford, Ontario has some of its platform paved with bricks.
Lone Geep
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Cinders yes, clinkers no. Clinkers are pieces of partially burned coal that have fused together into a big chunk.
Cinders were also often used for school running tracks, and as warning tracks on baseball fields.
PRR, B&O, and Reading all used cinders for roads and parking areas in yards, shop areas, and stations. Cinders were also used for passenger platforms at some smaller stations. Several stations on Penn Central's NY-Washington Main Line still had cinder platforms in the 1970s.
It wouldn't show on a model, but B&O used cinders as a base under brick platforms. The platforms held up very well and the cinders tended to resist weed growth. Best of all, they were "free".
Yes, very fine cinders would probably be the most common material for paving around an engine house or yard office. I suggest using the finest you can find (N scale cinder ballast, perhaps). This might not be true in areas where coal was not commonly used for locomotive fuel, home heating, and industrial power. One paving material that seems to be rarely represented by modelers is brick. It probably wasn't used so often around engine terminals, towers, and yard offices; but it was often found in parking lots for public buildings such as passenger and freight stations, as well as for city street paving.
Brick paving began to disappear on older major roads around the 1950's, but it continued to be found in the older parts of towns for a long time. I drove on brick pavement on a street in Ohio just a few days ago!
Tom
Unusual question! Actually, I just read last night in one of this year's Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association's "The Mainstreeter", where in Toppinish Washington, the N.P. used cinders as fill in a parking lot at the Toppenish depot. This would have been around the turn of teh last century, 1900. So, yes, it was done.
NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
Employee parking lots in those days were usually cinders. At a passenger depot asphalt or concrete were used.
I will soon be modelling parking lots for my engine house and yard office and I am wondering if the prototype used cinders and clinker for employee parking lots at their facilities during the steam era. My railroad is based from the 60's to the 80's but I would think that management wouldn't be too concerned about simple parking lots. Am I wrong.