I remember seeing coal delivered to homes and businesses. The coal slide down a chute attached to the delivery truck through an opening in the house's foundation (?) into the basement. For businesses it might have been an opening in the sidewalk. I can't remember exactly how they looked. I want to add this feature to some of my structures. I'm stuck. Can't locate any pics, etc. I'm looking for a nudge in the right direction. Thanx.
I have seen metal doors located at the bottom of a wall, 2' x 2' or so, and have been told these where for coal delivery.
Google Images is your friend. This one shows a coal delivery through a door in the sidewalk:
If you're thinking of modelling a coal delivery scene, take a look at this HO-scale Jordan truck:
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
It was normally a cast metal door about 16-18 inches in the front foundation wall of the building.
http://www.coalcampusa.com/westpa/connellsville/phillips/coal.jpg
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
The coal chute on my folks house was no longer in use when I was a boy, but the door was still there, sealed shut, and fragments of coal were still on the ground below the chute. Nobody in our neighborhood heated with coal but nearly every house had the old coal chute still there, and one family still had the coal bin in the basement.
It was a rather plain metal door with a handle that you would tug -- I cannot recall if it was to pull away entirely or if it was hinged. The more I think of it I think it was hinged with some sort of simple latch to keep it closed tightly. Eventually my folks had it removed and the opening was bricked up.
I followed the above advice and googled "residential coal chute door" and came up with this website that has two interesting photos.
http://dailyphotobutcherfortheworld.blogspot.com/2008_08_01_archive.html
Dave Nelson
Hi!
Being a kid in Chicago in the late '40s thru the '50s, I definitely recall the coal deliveries. My parents had a grocery store, and the early deliveries would have a dump truck emptying the load in front of the store, and then a hard working guy would shovel into a wheelbarrow, and run it down the courtway to be dumped into a 2x4 opening leading to the basement pile.
Sometime in the early '50s, the coal came in large canvas bags (like huge shopping bags) and again, the hard working guy would carry the bags to the opening into the basement.
Occasionally a conveyer on wheels with a gas engine for power would be used, but only in situations where it made sense - like where there was an opening in the sidewalk. These openings were covered by two swing up metal doors, and to the best of my recall the openings were about 4x6 feet or so, and led to the coal dump attached to the basement.
FYI, the use and conveyence of coal was a dirty, dirty job. When my parents finally got kerosene stoves (one for the store, one for the living quarters), we thought we were in high cotton. Ha, for me that was short lived, for when I hit 11 or 12, I was assigned the duty of carrying up the 5 gallon containers of kerosine from the basement and filling the stoves.
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
My grandfather lived in the country, but his coal chute was a window in the foundation that opened directly into the coal bin. Nothing fancy in rural America.
..... Bob
Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here. (Captain Kirk)
I reject your reality and substitute my own. (Adam Savage)
Resistance is not futile--it is voltage divided by current.
Same thing in Philadelphia row homes. There was a window in the front that was opened and the truck had the chute much like a cement truck that dumped directly into the coal bin. Then the home owner had the pleasure of manually shoveling the coal into the boiler to make steam heat. I was too young to even have any idea how heat was regulated or how long the coal lasted but I remember my father telling me about banking it before going to bed at night. No wonder conversion to #2 heating oil or natural gas was welcomed by the home owners. The bin itself was probably a function of usage but for a row home in Philly I am guessing it was 8' x 8' and the coal was maybe 6' deep after filling. The bin itself was made of somthing on the order of 2" x 6" lumber much like a horse stall in a barn. I don't recall any having a door or wall on the front but the ones I saw as a kid were not in use and that may have been removed to open up the space. The back wall where the window was was usually the foundation wall.
For residences, it was often just the basement window that was used, rather than a special opening. I recall Dad taking out the basement window and the coal truck would drive right up in the front yard so that the chute from the truck would extend through that window into the coal bin in the basement. One didn't order a coal delivery if it had been rainy and the ground was soft...
Bill
The dedicated coal delivery doors in the neighborhood I lived in were either ordinary glass basement windows (single-family residences) or iron doors in the foundation. The apartment house on the corner had a circular manhole in the sidewalk, covered by the usual, "Pull it off with a hook," cover. I was told that the coal bin was well below sidewalk level and there was an angled hunk of culvert under the cover.
Never did see any coal delivered there. About two weeks after we moved in, the furnace was converted to oil and the delivery connection was installed under that manhole cover, much to the consternation of several oil delivery drivers.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with domestic heat provided by coal, burned in hibachi)
(For those unfamiliar, a hibachi resembles a clay flowerpot.)
Bear Mountainman I remember seeing coal delivered to homes and businesses. The coal slide down a chute attached to the delivery truck through an opening in the house's foundation (?) into the basement. For businesses it might have been an opening in the sidewalk. I can't remember exactly how they looked. I want to add this feature to some of my structures. I'm stuck. Can't locate any pics, etc. I'm looking for a nudge in the right direction. Thanx.
Here is a Tichy coal chute that runs about 5.00 It is part number 8167. I can't get the photo to link to this site.
www.tichytraingroup.com
I was born in 1951. We heated with coal till 1968 and if it wasn't for not being able to find parts for the old frunace at the scape yards dad would have used it longer. In our case the coal was dumped on the sidewalk in front of the house and from the time that I was big enough to help in any manner it was a simple but backbreaking chore began from there: shovel the coal into a wheel barrel, take it to window where the coal bin was, dump it in, go back to the coal pile, start all over till it was gone and then clean everything up. We didn't have a selve feeding furnace, so the coal was shoveled from the bin to the furnace also. If we ran out before a coal delivery we would take burlap bags to the coal yard where there was, for lack of words, a coin operated vending machine of sorts with a coal chute where you would buy the size you wanted. Just keep feeding in the money till you got what you needed.
Thinking back now it was alot of hard work but you didn't think of it that then. It was just part of everyday life and someting you did.
All of the above methods were used here in Pittsburgh when I was growing up.. Here is a photo of a door that's still on my foundation today. The door itself is 16"x16". There is a sloping sill behind the door that would help coal to slide through. My foundation is about two and half feet thick and made of sandstone. That's just a concrete cap on the exterior. Fortunately, it is no longer used.
When I was a kid, a lot of homes were built where trucks could not back up to a coal shute or window. So we used buckets to carry the coal from the street up the steps and then dumped it into the coal bins. This was usually an all day job and everybody in our family participated. Kids, especially teenagers, could always pick up some spending money in the neighborhood do this. As far as I am concerned, this wasn't a particular fond memory of the good old days.
Tom
Pittsburgh, PA
MisterBeasley If you're thinking of modelling a coal delivery scene, take a look at this HO-scale Jordan truck:
If you are looking for a more modern coal delivery truck, Sheepscot Scale Products has a number of them; they are resin kits
http://www.sheepscotscale.com/site/search/node/coal
This is one on an Autocar C-90 body; they also have coal dump bodies to add you your cab and chassis
http://www.sheepscotscale.com/site/2009/04/19/autocr-c-90-coal-delivery-truck
If you are interested send a request on their contact page at
http://www.sheepscotscale.com/site/contact
George In Midcoast Maine, 'bout halfway up the Rockland branch
funny thing, as i was reading these posts, i turned around and in looking at the wall in my basement there is a old cast iron door that reads "BANNER IRON WORKS-ST LOUIS MO". this house is on a corner and the coal truck no doubt delivered from the side street right into the chute that is now bricked over. my home is now heated with a baseboard hot water system and the little boiler is about the size of a water cooler but when this house was first built there was no doubt a coal bin in the corner and probably a stoker fired boiler the size of a small steam locomotive. why do i keep thinking about the movie "Christmas Story" where Ralphie's dad keeps cursing the clinkers?
out in the garage, i discovered a contraption that looks like a miniature stove and i guess the former owners cound not bear to part with the antique. it is a small coal fired hot water heater. it probably sat down here in the basement next to the old boiler.
grizlump
On a related item, Bar Mills makes a street elevator in HO N S and O scales. That is an elevator that comes up through the sidewalk under a set of metal door hatches. It is at the bottom of this link
http://www.barmillsmodels.com/Basics_Master_3.html
The house that my parents had had two chutes--one on either side of the house. The reason was that it had apparently been used as a business and that driveway was likely to have had a truck already on it. The owner decided that he would have 2 bins in the basement--so that if the driveway was used at the time the delivery could be done from the other side...
Any argument carried far enough will end up in Semantics--Hartz's law of rhetoric Emerald. Leemer and Southern The route of the Sceptre Express Barry
I just started my blog site...more stuff to come...
http://modeltrainswithmusic.blogspot.ca/
And don't forget the opposite job getting the ashes out of the boiler and hauling them out on trash day. That is, except the two or three buckets full that were kept for throwing on the snow for traction in the winter.
dehusmanIt was normally a cast metal door about 16-18 inches in the front foundation wall of the building. http://www.coalcampusa.com/westpa/connellsville/phillips/coal.jpg
When I was a kid growing up in the early 60's our house was still heated by coal. There was a little door like the one in the picture (see quoted url). I don't recall how often the truck came to fill it up but I remember it being a "big event" to a 2-3 yo kid. The truck came, backed-up along the side of the house and they opened the coal door and sorta half-ramped and half-shoveled the coal into the coal chute. A similar thing happend at my babysitter's house. They had coal there too. It was still pretty common in the town I grew up in.