Coal Mine Mock-up

Hey Christopher

I pulled out my copy of "Chesapeake & Ohio Railway in the Coalfields of West Virginia and Kentucky" by Tom Dixon and took a look at Chapter 5 "Mines & Tipples" and I think you have it nailed. This is a great example of an older 50's era tipple. I like that you have 3 tracks for loading which will give you lots of flexibility. You have 3 tiers which gives nice depth and dimension especially as it sits against a forested hill. Assuming you are not working to reproduce a specific prototype, you might think of adding some type of coal storage silo and 1/50 scale crane boom sections (you can order these from DHS Diecast- Conrad 843 boom sections should be the perfect size) make great conveyor supports. I would pick out a good name for it too and stencil that onto the building. Pick a real name and not something corny as we are prone to do. Some names from the book include "Elk Creek Coal Co Preparation Plant", "Amherst Coal Co", "Armco Stickney Mine #5" Guyan Eagle Coal Company" "New River Company", 'Quinwood Mine" "Clay Poole Mine".  I will look through the pictures again and see what other visual elements exist in a mine scene.....

Do you plan to actually load cars with this? I am planning a little more modern tipple for my pike and am thinking of using the main building as a sort of holding tank for Woodland Scenics cinders which will be gravity fed into the cars. Haven't worked through the unloading piece yet though....

Don,

Thanks for the response and suggestions. I'll definitely follow up on your suggestions. I do need to nail down those types of details.

I sort of combined aspects of this mine Nuttalburg and one called Raven Red Ash and Coal CO INC. The Nuttalburg mine has tons of info on it and still exists as a tourist attraction in West Virginia.

Here is the Raven Red Ash Coal Co. I'm not going to be loading cars with the mine.

I'll just stage the loaded cars for guests.

Good looking mock up Christopher. It is interesting to see these stope mines. Where I grew up in MI the coalmines were all vertical shaft mines with a headstock building for the cable like this:

The building on the left is the headframe and hoistworks, you can see part of the headframe  support on the outside of the building. A vertical shaft goes down to the level of the coal seam, and then horizontal stopes are cut into it from there. The building on the right is the boiler/power house along with the breaker facility and tipple to fill hoppers. This is Gage Coal Co shaft #8 in St Charles MI, and the headframe building still stands and is part of a "nature camp".

In the stope mines you are showing, how are the cars entering emptied? Hard to tell from these pics, but they seem to be  gons, so there must be a car tipper in that building. Along with that question, I am curious exactly how they juggled the incoming gons. You can see a string of them entering, there must be a second track for the empties to leave by, otherwise only the first car in the string could be emptied. I wonder if the car tipper somehow lifts the car, dumps it and continues on over to a second track on the other side of it and sets it on the exit track? That building they are entering does not look wide enough for that, or even tall enough for a rotary car tipper. But, there is the open structure behind it too, that might have something to do with emptying the gons.  I guess they might have shovelers emptying the gons too. I do not see any type of powerhouse which makes me inclined to think they are indeed using manpower to empty the gons from the mine, and also that means that they are using "breakerboys" instead of a mechanical breaker. A car tipper and /or breaker facility could be electrically driven I suppose, but then I do not see any sign of that either. I can see two grades of coal being loaded in the Raven pic, coarse on the two left tracks and fine on the right one.

These are just some thoughts about how this structure is operating. Not sure what you plan on doing as far as modeling the gons coming from the stope. I guess you could use HO track there.

Looks like a fun build,thanks for sharing and please keep us posted with your progress.

Owen,

I know what you are saying. I've had the same questions. On the photo with the outside structure, I believe that was added as an exit track. I widened the house to 18' to account for entry and exit of the cars. I don't want that part of the model to become monstrous so I figured a little selective compression would be in order.

Look at the photo below from an earlier time at nearly the same angle as the photo I posted earlier. It almost looks like a track comes out below the upper track.

There does not appear to be room for a rotary tipple and it just doesn't make sense for the photos shown. I thought at first the cars might dump sideways onto a conveyer, but while I was doing research I saw a diagram of how cars could come in and dump forward and the arrangement was almost exactly as the Raven Red Ash photos. I'll try to find that diagram again on the internet. I should have saved it.

What materials are you intending to use for construction of the model?   It sure looks like a swell design.

Thank you,

Brad

Here is a GREAT example by forum member and contributor Bob Bartizek!

Here is the link to his website called the Pennsylvania and Western Railroad

http://www.pennwestrr.com/

And specifically his build of the Furnace Hill Coal Company!

http://www.pennwestrr.com/phot0802.html

Hope it helps!

Thanks for the link Mike. It does look good.

Brad,

Since my inspiration is drawn more from the Nuttalburg mine, I'm going to keep the appearance as a steel structure. The basic structure will be built from styrene or ABS so I can get the various H and I beams, and T and L braces. The stairs and railings will be from Plastruct but I'm not sure if these will be too beefy. I'd rather not scratch build those but I may have to. The doors from Tichy are good to go.

The corrugation will be from either Builders of Scale, or a local machinist friend who makes his own. The window frames will be etched brass to keep them thin.