Coaling Towers

No matter how prototypical, my brain keeps equating this concrete coal tower with....

Bruce

Thanks, Bruce - now I'm going to think of Bender when I run trains.  I hope it doesn't use bad language when I have guest.

The Lionel tower seems to be similar to some of C&NW towers...

WOW! Everything about what you have crafted there, structures and ground-scape, is perfect - beautiful, actually. So realistic! Obviously, you really know what you are talking about; that is, you have seen in real-life what you have modeled so well. I mean, I had no idea about those screw-like items in the pit (if that is what it is called) which I assume keep the deposited coal moving and not getting clogged, right? And I enjoy that cover over the "chute" (correct word?) that transfers the coal from the pit (correct word?) to the tower.

Wow, again!

FrankM.

Thanks Frank! My modeling goal is realism first and foremost. Folks often forget how filthy such a facility was so I try to impart that sense as I model.

Bob

If I may suggest, have you posted these photos on what some might consider the larger forum, the "Hi-rail, 0-27.." ? I may have missed it, but if you have other photos of your layout, I would live to see more. This is museum quality craftwork/artistry, IMO.

FrankM.

I agree it is very special craftsmanship

Ken M

  Down goes the coaling tower at Collingwood Yard in Cleveland, Ohio - December 2013

the incline set up is a coal wharf where the cars are winched or shoved by a locomotive. the other is a tower like the sadly departed COLLINWOOD tower. conrail john

I appreciate your kind words Frank. I don't post all that often and only if the subject of a thread seems like something I could add to. Here is another view of the coaling tower.

Bob

I just spent way too much time searching the net for coaling towers.  There is a LOT

of info and photos on there, but very few about small wooden ones such as this, which

is what I would l prefer to model.  I had forgotten that Golden Gate had done both a

wooden and a concrete tower, not the smallest, but not the largest, either, the wooden

back in 2009 (the $200+ price at the time kept me away).  There are a lot of concrete

ones survivng, standing alone like abandoned grain elevators (for a weird story about

one, check out the Charlottesville, Va. one), but I could only scare up the Chama, NM

wooden one.  Would like to know about any other surviving wooden ones, and what method was used by Otto Mears' three little lines to coal his locos in Silverton?  (I also

discovered on a site I searched that Richard E., who hosts the O scale auto posting, had built a really nice looking commercial  coal dealer model, one of those with cylindrical concrete silos)

How close to scale is the Bachmann wood coaling tower?

It would be an awesome project to model this scene.