# Logging: coaling station?



## Cap'nBill (Dec 27, 2008)

I'm looking for some ideas for a coaling station that might have been used in a logging operation. How did they get it? Would the Shay/Climax etc. haul a hopper to a mainline coal tipple. Any ideas, pics, or references? Thanks, Bill


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## Phippsburg Eric (Jan 10, 2008)

The Maine Narrow Gauge lines did not use coal tipples but instead had a coal shed. In snowy areas it was important to keep the coal covered or it would be frozen solid in the winter months which is when much of the logging was done. 

Coal was hauled in on hopper cars loaded from ships in the case of the WW&F or from standard gauge lines and shoveled from a raised track into bins. They of course used small engines which could be coaled by hand in a reasonable time, as probably could a shay or climax. the sheds were simple pole barns some times having the side completely open so that coal could be easily transferred. They might have used a small hand powered crane and coal buckets to do the loading. 


logging lines would use the simplest system they could...probably no tall concrete tipples with conveyors for hauling coal from a dump station at its foot.


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## cape cod Todd (Jan 3, 2008)

You could always convert your locos to wood burners, there would be plenty of that around. 
A small local line I have been to uses coal hauled in by a truck then its loaded into a hopper/tipple by a front end loader then via chute into the small tender.


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## Andre Anderson (Jan 3, 2008)

Greetings, 

What you did not mention was where youor logging line is. If it was out west they would have used oil, in the Virginia's and in the south they used coal and as some one said most logging lines would have used either a shed or a platform rather than a coaling tower. A coal tipple usally was at a mine not at a lcomoitve fueling facility, a railroad usally called them coaling towers or facilitys. 
.


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