Looking for Picture of Covered Coal Delivery Industry

[wazzou]

Our pit was on a slight decline and the car was typically spotted as close to the very 1st bay, nearest the locomotive, of a 3 bay hopper, in my lifetime.
We used a track jack under a wheel to push the car back uphill to the next bay.
Our coal always came from either Utah and/or Wyoming mines because we sold each baaed on customer demand/need but also based on cost at time of shipping.
The cars were almost exclusively UP but on a very few occasions may have been Rio Grande but never other roads as far as I can recall.

[Chris333]

What's left of a concrete trestle:
https://goo.gl/photos/eFzXokgq3ra35eJx6
https://www.google.com/maps/@41.1052895,-80.6586582,3a,57.3y,44.17h,94.23t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1si51GokVY40BvmjRxMQpSkQ!2e0!6s%2F%2Fgeo2.ggpht.com%2Fcbk%3Fpanoid%3Di51GokVY40BvmjRxMQpSkQ%26output%3Dthumbnail%26cb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile.gps%26thumb%3D2%26w%3D203%26h%3D100%26yaw%3D225.70819%26pitch%3D0%26thumbfov%3D100!7i16384!8i8192

[Skeebo]

Those abandoned concrete coal trestles look like the old U boat pens in France........

     Jim

[nkalanaga]

Bryan:  I also used a track (wheel) jack, once, at the Pasco depot.  The railroad allowed a group of us, in high school, to move a company service boxcar parked on a spur, with supervision.  Very slow, but surprisingly easy. 

Once we got the car started, three of us could keep it going by pushing it, with the employee working the brake wheel to stop it.

[OldEastRR]

So there were no ties between the rails ... the rails were spiked to thick stringers and there were cross-members fastened to the underside of the bottom of the stringers at widely spaced intervals. Right? There were no ties on the concrete pier section at all? 

[wazzou]

So there were no ties between the rails ... the rails were spiked to thick stringers and there were cross-members fastened to the underside of the bottom of the stringers at widely spaced intervals. Right? There were no ties on the concrete pier section at all?

I'm assuming you're asking me? 
If you look inside the concrete walls, there are typical trestle bents supporting stringers that support beams parallel to the rails that the rail was spiked to.

[OldEastRR]

Just entering "coal trestle" on Google doesn't bring up much coal trestles, other than models of them. Then you get pictures of trestles, of coal, of trains on trestles, or just coal cars  or ... for all the vaunted data base of the internet, it doesn't make a very good record of all the information mankind has accumulated. Only the stuff it thinks you'll buy.

[nkalanaga]

Part of the problem is that the Internet only contains what people have put, in digital form, in public files.  There are very few coal trestles still in use, so few digital pictures of them, and most film or glass-plate pictures have never been converted.

[peteski]

I wonder if shorpy.com or Library of Congress woudl have some coal trestle photos? They have lots of old photos.

[nkalanaga]

It would be worth a try.  There were programs in the 30s to document industries, so it wouldn't be surprising to find coal trestles.