Very Cool Coaling tower

I've seen similar coaling towers but none that span as much distance as that one.

Man, that thing looks like a menacing, Star Wars-style imperial walker thingamajig...

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

Scotty beamed it up.....LOL

There is a similar one on the CSX at Balcony Falls (Glasgow), VA.

NS at Bluefield, WVa.

That doesn't look like a photo, but artwork, with maybe artistic license taken?

Ah the coaling tower at Vicker.  Here is the tower from back in the day.

http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=136130

Bucket chained up?

Thanks Chris for posting this,as I also wondered how this was fed with coal. What an interesting design. 

This location was very popular during the 611 trips last May, with at least 50 photographers, a gaggle of locals and a bewildered deputy sheriff present on the May 8th trip.
611 is scheduled to make 3 round trips under this next Memorial Day weekend.

Farther west at Prichard,WV, another xN&W coaling tower of a different design still survives.

The MCRR had two on the Chicago Line that spanned at least two tracks, one in Galesburg and one in Michigan City, In.  Here is the one in Michigan City...

The CSX has one south of Toledo toward Upper Sandusky, Oh...

Marty

Excellent resource on Flickr

https://www.flickr.com/groups/coaltowers/pool/

I love the big one at East Altoona, Pa:

Here is a closer look at the Vicker tower.

And here again.

pretty slick engineering, spanning that distance with reinforced concrete rather than steel supporting the weight.

pretty slick engineering, spanning that distance with reinforced concrete rather than steel supporting the weight.

And how do you know it's reinforced concrete instead of steel encased in concrete?

What's interesting is that any are left at all. One would think they would have been demolished by now. Apparently it varies by railroad. Historically, it's neat that some are still around, but you'd think there could be potential problems with leaving huge old concrete structures sitting in place. I remember reading that when the UP took over the SP, one of the things they did was demolish any SP coaling towers that were still in place.

breezinup posted:

What's interesting is that any are left at all. One would think they would have been demolished by now. Apparently it varies by railroad. Historically, it's neat that some are still around, but you'd think there could be potential problems with leaving huge old concrete structures sitting in place. I remember reading that when the UP took over the SP, one of the things they did was demolish any SP coaling towers that were still in place.

Cost is the reason.  As long as they're not hurting anything, it's hard to justify the cost and traffic disruption demolition would cause.  Besides, where would you get all that concrete to fall without damaging the tracks underneath?

All of the external steel work has removed, which would have been an eventual problem.

These things were built to last and hold tons of coal.  Empty shouldn't be an issue.

Rusty

Rusty Traque posted:

breezinup posted:

What's interesting is that any are left at all. One would think they would have been demolished by now. Apparently it varies by railroad. Historically, it's neat that some are still around, but you'd think there could be potential problems with leaving huge old concrete structures sitting in place. I remember reading that when the UP took over the SP, one of the things they did was demolish any SP coaling towers that were still in place.

Cost is the reason.  As long as they're not hurting anything, it's hard to justify the cost and traffic disruption demolition would cause.  Besides, where would you get all that concrete to fall without damaging the tracks underneath?

All of the external steel work has removed, which would have been an eventual problem.

These things were built to last and hold tons of coal.  Empty shouldn't be an issue.

Rusty

Since only a handful of these remain, there had to be good reasons for railroads across the country to demolish 99+ percent of them. Obviously cost and traffic disruption were outweighed by other more important considerations, and potential damage issues with falling concrete, which would be minor, were easily solved.

I'm glad there are a few remaining, though.

A lot depended on exactly where the concrete coaling tower was located, i.e. beside the main line, or directly over a main line. Removing one of those monsters would seriously disrupt all trains traffic for well more than a day. 

how do you know it's reinforced concrete instead of steel encased in concrete?

because steel girders are not encased in concrete. except to protect them from impact. due to the dissimilar expansion and loading rates between the materials, concrete surrounding a steel beam would crack and fall off the steel. even if there were some form of pins to try and hold it on.

concrete is effective in compression, not tension. that's why there is steel rebar in the concrete, carrying the tension load. I doubt the concrete beams holding the coal bunker was built as a pre-stressed structural element on site. that requires controlled formwork to pre-tension the rebar. something normally done at the factory and shipped to the job site.

there is a large array of steel rebar running along the long axis of those beams, with crosswise ties to keep proper spacing during the pour. rebar is formed with a raised cross hatch pattern all over it to give the concrete something to grip to, and vice versa.

This former SP concrete coaling tower at Mescal on the Sunset Route was removed in March, 1998.  It was of typical reinforced concrete construction. 

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.

There are a number of kits and models of wooden coaling towers. They still exist on Colorado narrow gauge, but do any originals still stand east of the Big Muddy?

SantaFe158 posted:

 

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.

 

 

The big guys had a coal conveyor:

Rusty