Plans for O scale Scratchbuilt Coal Tipple made from Styrofoam Sheet

Good luck pro hobby.  There are so many variations of tipples in this country.  You have lots of flexibility.  Just make sure it looks really filthy.  Coal work was and is a tough dirty job.

More model photos shown now. Interior details to come.

Overall dimensions:  88 feet x 150 feet x 128 feet

Photos of prototype coal tipple installations

Wow - if a coal tipple could be beautiful this one is it.  Really great craftsmanship.  I think I might "borrow" your idea for my layout.  

I hope you post more photos as you progress.

Thanks

Ed

See the PDF files which are also attached.  These show scale views of the structure which I used for my design.  The structure is constructed as 4 separate buildings which "bolt" together. The structure can very easily be disassembled and stored in individual boxes when not in use. The interior of each building has separate removable floors which will be detailed and painted. Interior and exterior LED lighting will also be added.

The roofs are removable also.

Very cool!

Peter

A tipple is a structure used at a mine to load the extracted product (e.g., coal, ores) for transport, typically into railroad hopper cars. In the United States, tipples have been frequently associated with coal mines, but they have also been used for hard rock mining.

 Operation

 Basic coal tipples, no longer used in the industry, simply loaded coal into railroad cars. Many tipples had simple screening equipment to sort coal pieces by size before loading. Today, a coal mine facility usually includes a coal preparation plant which washes coal of soil and rock, before loading it for transport to market. The term "tipple" may be used interchangeably with coal prep plant.

Tipples were initially used with minecarts, also called tubs or tram cars, or mine cars in the U.S. These were small hopper cars that carried the product on a mine railway out of the mine. When a mine car entered the upper level of the tipple, its contents were dumped through a chute leading to a railroad hopper car positioned on a track running beneath the tipple. At some facilities, each car was tipped over manually—thus the name, "tipple."  In higher volume facilities, each car was placed in a machine called a rotary dump, which rotated the car to dump the coal.

Rotary dump

In the early 20th century, mine operators began using conveyor belts to load coal and ores into railroad cars, eliminating the use of mine cars.[5] At some mines the conveyor loading facility is still referred to as a "tipple."