Seeking examples of very small coaling towers

[Chris333]

lol this just showed up on the Facebooks 

Philadelphia & Reading Railroad Third & Berks Streets locomotive coaling station in Philadelphia, Pa. in 1894. (Link-Belt Engineering Co. Photo)

[Angus Shops]

Max, the Canadian Pacific Historical Association has a great collection of scanned CPR drawings available on line. The "western lines 40 ton coaling station" drawings are available there (I just checked). You'll probably need to set yourself up with a user name and password, but otherwise it's free. And thanks to PGE for reminding me...
Geoff

[mmagliaro]

Thanks!  Joined and got the drawings.

And interestingly, it specifies a 10 HP motor.  Drawing date is 1933.  The motor is shown as optionally electric
or diesel fuel powered (having a fuel tank outside the little motor building if the motor is a diesel engine).

It's basically a set up with pulleys, a clutch, and long cables running from the motor in the little house, through a "tunnel", around a pulley and then up the long hoise shaft.  So they didn't put the motor up in the hoist shaft.  There seems to be plenty of room for it, but it was probably easier to service in a building on the ground.  Although it means a long complex system of pulleys and cable instead of having it right at the top of the hoist tower.

But the point is that our guesses weren't too bad.  A 10 HP motor, cables, and a bucket.  They even give the rotational speed of the motor.

[Angus Shops]

The CPHA site is great, and they regularly add new drawings. You can look up the specifications of CPR iron bunk beds, both 3 tier and 2 tier, if you're so inclined. I bet Mark D needs to know this. The drawing collection appears to have expanded substantially since I last poked around in it; I'll have to spend some time seeing what's new.

There's a 50 ton option in there as well...  Even the 40 ton option is a fairly complex arrangement when all the dumping and hoisting components are added in. As for the separate hoist motor building, it seems to me that there's a lot of stuff in the little building, especially for a diesel powered option, when the oil tank, 'circulating water tank' and all the other bits and pieces are added up, and there's a stove in there to keep it all from freezing up in the winter. Even the electric motor looks pretty hefty.
Geoff

[nkalanaga]

Max:  With the option of either electric or diesel power, I wonder if they put the motor in a separate building so they wouldn't have to climb the tower to start the diesel?  An electric motor could easily be fit at the top, with a switch at the bottom, but a diesel engine would require someone to climb the tower each time.  This way the same design works for both.

[Chris333]

I watched this on large ships like the Titanic. If you go to 7:20 you see a large group of people loading coal into the ship.

[randgust]

Having just been out there Saturday, I was surprised how 'small' the Chama, NM (D&RGW narrow gauge) tower actually is.   Looking at the Campbell's HO model on many layouts, it seemed rather massive, but first hand, yeah, it's on the smallish side compared to most.

https://markpaulson.files.wordpress.com/2012/09/chama-coaling-tower375.jpg

It's got that nice vertical/standard railroad element, but it's still on a pretty small footprint.

https://www.campbellscalemodels.com/product_p/0357.htm  (HO version)

For comparision I found reference that it's a 75-ton structure.

The 'new one' out at Greenfield Village (MI) for the excursion railroad out there is only 50-ton, and that's about as small as it gets.
There must be plans somewhere for this one as they built it new.
http://rypn.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=36527

[mmagliaro]

That 50 ton one is dead-on close to the one I built (which is 40 ton).   The most interesting thing about that one is that I learned that Fairbanks-Morse built coaling towers!  I had no idea.  Is it the same company that built the locomotives?

[Chris333]

We have a Fairbanks-Morse scale at work.

About a mile from me the Erie had a Fairbanks-Morse coal tower (EDIT: I think it was a cinder hoist), but I have never seen a plan or photo of it. Just a map showing where it was.
About a 1/2 mile from me the B&O had a concrete tower located right on a wye used for turning EM-1's.

[Simon D.]

There's a small FM one here:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/13/t/174473.aspx

There was also a small one like this but double sided at Raton on the ATSF - can't find a picture of it unfortunately.

[narrowminded]

That 50 ton one is dead-on close to the one I built (which is 40 ton).   The most interesting thing about that one is that I learned that Fairbanks-Morse built coaling towers!  I had no idea.  Is it the same company that built the locomotives?

The Thurmond WV tower is a Fairbanks Morse and is still standing.  Most of the internal mechanisms are gone but once you understand how they worked you can see where all of the key parts would be based on the pit foundations, hoist machine house shell, and such.  That's still a very cool scene with lots of traffic. 

And FM had divisions that built all sorts of machinery.  An interesting quick view of FM over the years.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairbanks-Morse

[narrowminded]

That reconstructed tower at the Henry Ford Museum looks like it could be a good generic one.   After all, if nothing else, they have a very capable research staff to figure out what a small coaling tower should look like.