Hartman posted:Okaaaa. There must be some serious parts missing today. I just can not figure how the coal got up to the tower section.
Does anyone know how this one was operable?
Dennis
I don't know about that particular tower, but it was probably something along the lines of what the one we use where I work has.
We have a nearly full size replica (shortened a bit to meet city codes and fit our smaller 1800's era engines better) of a 50 ton capacity Fairbanks Morse coaling tower that was built a couple years ago. Coal comes in by truck for us, and is dumped into a receiving pit behind the tower. From there, it is loaded about half a ton at a time into a skip bucket that then runs up a track and dumps into the tower. It takes quite a bit of time to load the tower, so that makes me wonder if they either had a much larger bucket on those big towers, or if they had a conveyor system of some sort set up.
A photo of the construction I took
A video of an engine being loaded. Unfortunately I don't have any clips of the tower being loaded available.
