The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

MISCELLANEOUS INSTALLATIONS CHAPTER XXXIX THE COALING OF RAILWAY ENGINES As far as England is concerned, mechanical appliances have not been used very much for the coaling of locomotives. The old methods are still in wide use, baskets or other receptacles, holding about 1 cwt. of coal, being carried, often by hand, from the platform in the coal yard to the tender of the engine. It is also quite usual to employ small cranes worked by hand or by motive power for coaling locomotives, a most expensive proceed ing, Fig. 871. Section of Old Coaling Stage at Crewe North Shed. but it is to be hoped that the efficient locomotive coaling installations on American lines will soon find favour with the all-too-conservative British railway companies, as tiey a\e done on the Continent. It pays to install mechanical equipment if 100 to 150 locomotives have to be coaled per day. . . r Old Coaling Stage at Crewe.'-The old coaling stage at Crewe consists of .o decks, on each of which are placed three hydraulic cranes of 1 ton capacity (see Big, 87 ). Between these decks are two sets of rails on which the full coal wagons stand and on the other sides of the decks from the coal wagons are the roads on which the locomotives stand for coaling. . , , , The wagon road and the engine road are on the same level, and the top of the deck is about level with the bottom of the wagon. The men have, therefore, to cig own m o 1 Extract from a paper read before the Institution of Civil Engineers by C. T. B. Cooke, M.I.C.E. 617