The Mechanical Handling and Storing of Material

THE COALING OF RAIL WA Y ENGINES 621 coal is brought in is not the same as that upon which the engines are coaled, so when an installation spans four lines of rails for coaling four engines at the same time one or two sidings on either side are used for the coal wagons. . An example of the above is the coaling plant for the railway engines of the Philadelphia and Reading Railway, United States of America. This extensive installation is illustrated in Fig. 874. Four locomotives can be simultaneously coaled and supplied with water and sand. There are two “Hunt” conveyors, one for coal and one for conveying the ashes from the engine to the receptacle provided for them. Between the coal and ash hoppers is a small hopper for sand which is shown m the illustration. The capacity of this plant is 600 tons of coal per day and five loads of ashes. Nearly 500 main-line and suburban locomotives call at this station every twenty-four hours. Similar installations are employed by the Boston and Albany, and other United States railways. The staff employed consists of eleven men during the daytime, and one man during the night. The labour is divided as follows: One foreman, one stoker, one man in the coal tunnel, one in the ash tunnel, one man above for wetting ashes, four men for filling the tenders, and one for filling the locomotive water tanks. During the night-time one man in attendance sees to the loading of the locomotives with coal. The desire to coal a greater number of engines has been the incentive to fuitiei developments whereby the engines are not fed direct from the elevated silo but from a bridge spanning the railway which transfers the coal by small trucks on rails from the silos through small pockets and hinged shoots on to the tenders. This method has the advantage that the coal can be weighed before delivery. Another great advantage is that the relative positions of the coal receptacle and the coaling siding are more or less immaterial, so that space of lesser value can be utilised for the erection of mechanica y equipped coaling appliances. . . The coaling installations being confined to the most important junctions, which are often great distances apart, it is necessary to provide locomotives with coal at intermediate stations. These auxiliary coaling facilities are not necessarily confined to the stations, but are sometimes erected on any convenient spot on the line; such installations are very similar to those previously described but on a much smaller scale. . . A different system again is that used on the Southern Pacific Railway, where the coal is stacked in a small heap, as shown in Fig. 875, and removed by a crane and grab to a portable hopper from which the engines can be coaled. Ihe illustration explains itself and it need only be mentioned that the hopper is not portable in order to adjust itself to the position of the tender or engine, but for the reason that the whole lengt 1 o the stock pile can be transferred and the portable hopper moved forward as the one end of the pile becomes exhausted. It is said that the cost of transferring the coal in this way amounts to one penny per ton. This last installation is perhaps the starting point for stocking larger quantities of coal, to which there is now a greater tendency than ever in the United States. Formerly coal for not more than five or six days was kept in stoc and this was frequently stored in railway trucks and on sidings. 1 he more modem method of storing it is in stock piles or heaps, which are described in Chapter J . Coaling Station of the Munich Central Railway.—This was erected by T. Pohlig, of Cologne, Hunt’s patent conveyor being used. The installation shown in Figs. 876 and 877 consists of a steel structure, which supports, in addition to four large coll hoppers, the necessary conveying machinery. The plant has been erected over a tunnel, through which the lower strand of the Hunt conveyor runs. Above this tunne is a coal hopper built of masonry, over which run three lines of rails. 1 he coal is broug t to this receptacle by self-emptying railway trucks, and can be withdrawn by a senes.of