Very Cool Coaling tower

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