Soon after my indoor expansion at West Willow Hill was operational, the FEBT magazine Timber Transfer published an article by Ron Pearson on the Puckey & Co. Coal and Wood yard in Rockhill Furnace. The coal delivery trestle was a beefy wood structure with a few dump bins that remained extant under different names until the railroad closed in 1956. This structure is perfect for use as my Brunt Coal Co. delivery trestle.

The following two photos of Puckey & Co. stolen from the Timber Transfer article and used without permission. I will delete them if the copyright holder(s) objects…

Dave Williams photo…

Ron’s article included some scale sketches which I re-drew in Visio to 1:20.3 scale…

I printed a paper mock-up to get an idea how it might look…

And that is were the project sat for a year; until today.

The day began by taking my table saw off the stand to replace the on/off switch, then putting it all back together. Once repaired, I dug out the remains of a carved wood sign that I had salvaged a few years back. It may be Redwood, or Cedar; not sure. Very tight grain…

The first step in reclaiming this wood is to strip off the paint. I do this by slicing off about .375" leaving me with a nice veneer I can use elsewhere…

Flip it over and do it again, but because this is the carved side I only slice off just a tiny bit more than a kerf width; most ending up as sawdust. The deeper carving remains and will be cut away when the pieces are trimmed to final size…

For the next step I changed to a 200 tooth blade and made a zero clearance surface from a sheet of 3mm foamed PVC board. The lumber shown are the finish 12" x 12" timbers, about 47 scale feet long! You can see where the carving leaves a flaw in the timber…

When finished, I had a larger pile of sawdust than timber…

I also milled up a bunch of what were supposed to be 2x6 for the deck, but In order to actually get them to cut consistently I up-sized them to a scale 2.5" x 6"…

The next few days are supposed to be rainy here, so I’ll determine final dimensions to keep the track height the same then start cutting and thinking about an assembly jig.

Nice project Jon. That will look good in that corner.(https://www.largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-cool.gif)

I need to build the trestle first, but I’m thinking about the bins. Only the second photo shows them, and not with much detail. The drawings Ron Pearson included in his article don’t have much detail either. Probably just fab something up from styrene or PVC.

Nor is there much detail on how the rail is attached to the long stringers between bents. One can see a block looking things about where the rail head would be (in the first photo), but when you look at the hopper truck, the bottom of the wheel set and the rail is hidden from view. EBT didn’t use tie plates, but gauge bars are common. Would they have spiked rail directly to the stringers, I wonder?

Jon Radder said:

Ron’s article included some scale sketches which I re-drew in Visio to 1:20.3 scale…

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It looks like you could attach the rail directly onto the uprights , just make sure the uprights are with in gauge … put a piece between the uprights to keep them in check , heck I doubt anyone would notice …

(http://lsc.cvsry.com/Post2020/BruntCoal20-03.jpg)

The rail in the pic with the ties space rather far apart looks like it’s there to keep the wheels on the track ,see how the wheels are obscured …

Thats gonna be cool. Very unique. Something not seen

Neat project, Jon.

Nor is there much detail on how the rail is attached to the long stringers between bents. One can see a block looking things about where the rail head would be (in the first photo), but when you look at the hopper truck, the bottom of the wheel set and the rail is hidden from view. EBT didn’t use tie plates, but gauge bars are common. Would they have spiked rail directly to the stringers, I wonder?

I suspect they were spiked directly to the stringers. The coal had to drop between the rails, so any kind of tie would have got in the way. On Dave William’s photo you can almost see the rails on the stringers. [Email Jane at the TT and see if she has an original scan?]

The side view obscures the bottom of the wheels due to the angle, I think - that other pic shows no sign of anything to block the side view.

From my single attempt to build a trestle, those longitudinal stringers had to support a locomotive. I bet a fully-loaded coal hopper wasn’t as heavy (80,000# or 40 tons?) Those massive stringers would have supported the hopper when it rolled on.

But notice it is parked with the trucks over the trestle bents, where there are ties/cross beams to keep the stringers in place. Makes sense, as the coal hopper doors are between the trucks. Obviously custom sized to fit a 28’ hopper!
(P.S. you need a 3-bay to size the trestle properly - or are you going to make it match all your 2-bays?

Was it designed to have a truck , wagon , or just a pile under the hopper locations ?

Jon, there was also the coal trestle at Mt Union, which may have been made to the same design?

Interesting about the reclaimed wood and making veneer pieces with the painted surface.

2 bays move the bents closer… Looks like only one bay here was for trucks, the rest for shovels and conveyor belts … Near Chicago, The Bloomingdale line

Pete Thornton said:

But notice it is parked with the trucks over the trestle bents, where there are ties/cross beams to keep the stringers in place. Makes sense, as the coal hopper doors are between the trucks. Obviously custom sized to fit a 28’ hopper!

(P.S. you need a 3-bay to size the trestle properly - or are you going to make it match all your 2-bays?

This delivery trestle will be served by wooden 2-door, 2 bays and 3 bays. This in itself is causing me to scratch my head on bent locations. My premise is, that the trestle was designed to accommodate two wood hoppers and later modified to accommodate a three bay. Two of the two or three bays will not fit, but a combination of wood and two bay are possible and the door locations are close enough between those two styles.

Good point about the truck locations. I looked at doors, but not trucks so more operational research is needed!

Sean McGillicuddy said:

Was it designed to have a truck , wagon , or just a pile under the hopper locations ?

There is (was?) a truck scale inside the large door; so local delivery trucks were the customer. They probably accommodated small hand carry orders with just the spillage.

Pete Thornton said:

Jon, there was also the coal trestle at Mt Union, which may have been made to the same design?

I have pictures of the larger one near the A&P. I can use that bin for ideas. There is also one that was on concrete piers behind the Mt. Union engine house. Those piers are still there and not very high up. Don’t know what was loaded there or how.

Today was spent trying to decide on the layout of bents and bins. I want this to look like it could work with the cars that will service it. I tried, in vain, to draw this out on paper, but failed miserably several times so I resorted to a real world mock-up which always works for me. Taking note of what Pete noticed about the relationship between hopper trucks and bents I used masking tape to indicate locations of bents and bins for all the car types that will service the industry.

For starters; I laid out the bents and bins to service the earliest cars; my wood two door hoppers…

Vertical tape indicates a bent location; horizontal tape represents a bin and small squares on the ties indicate truck centers while over the bin. Even bent spacing didn’t work. Spacing them as close as the plan in the article, 12 foot on center, does not properly support the trucks nor give enough room to contain the dump of both doors. I decided on two spacing plans: 9 feet on center except for the bin openings which are 16 feet on center. I can’t fit two steel 2 bays on the siding, but one of each will fit…

It will not matter which type goes in first, the truck support and bin location works for either…

The problem arrives when you spot a 3 bay. Depending on which end goes in first, the proposed bins will handle either 2 or 1 door being dumped, but not all 3. Here B end first in in Spot 2, the two doors on the A end can be dumped…

Shove the car to spot 1 and you can dump the third door. The crew at Brunt’s will need one of those lever car movers

Now that I have this one figured out; I need to include the main (next track back) in the plan and possibly the lead to McGilicuddy’s as well. We’ll see if I milled enough wood for all three. I forgot about that third track and it will be more difficult as it is a ramp.

(http://lsc.cvsry.com/Post2020/BruntCoal20-17.jpg)

Are you going to cover the wood @ the end with a photo of a doorway /arch with a black/dark opening ?

Can we get an updated pic …

(http://lsc.cvsry.com/Post2019/Basement19-016.jpg)

One of my early life jobs was unloading “trap rock” and cement out of open and covered hoppers for Breckenridge Material Company. It was about a 15 bin trestle coming off a hillside to a bin/dump area below, the cement bin was at the very end and next to a cement mixing plant. There was a slight incline to the trestle, maybe .5%. The hoppers were pushed up the incline with a big old WWII 5 ton truck with a big block of cement, about the size of a coffin, over the rear drivers. The wheel path for the pusher truck wheels was made of 5 railroad rails on each side of the bin. The inside rail was upside down with the flat bottom of the rail as the top surface. The second rail from the inside open part of the tracks over the dump bins was right side up and spaced to the correct width for railroad trucks. The third, fourth and fifth rails were upside down for the surface of the dual wheeled tandem push truck, and also for dump trucks. Always thought this was a neat use of rail and wanted to model some day. This was a concrete plant, so lots of concrete used and little wooden ties involved in the construction.

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Jon, part of my reason for stating this, besides helping me remember how it was made, was your statement about a hand railcar moving device. Cars were pushed to the highest location on the trestle and then brake set, pusher backed away and any change of location was done by gravity. Best part of job was riding the unloaded hoppers back down into the 3 track yard after emptying them.

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As far as what type of material to use for bins under the track at the EBT, I think the coal just dumped to the ground in those pictures. If you remember up in Mt. Union, there was almost a coal hopper bin under one of the trestle bins for above ground storage. The small trestle by the Mt. Union Engine House, I believe just dumped on the ground and I always imagined it was wheeled or bucketed to the stove or engines.

Sean McGillicuddy said:

Are you going to cover the wood @ the end with a photo of a doorway /arch with a black/dark opening ?

I haven’t given much thought to that end in a while other than resist the urge to cut a hole big enough for a coupler to allow me to spot two of the 2 bay hoppers clear of the main.

What I have been thinking about is the other end and the ramp track in the back. For the end where the grade transitions I think I’ll carve up a quick sign foam block wall that the wooden stringers will rest on at the beginning of the trestle. This may eliminate the first bent on the left, This could be the treatment at the other end too, but below track level.

For an updated pic - this was taken just after track was laid in the temporary trestles…

And with some cars spotted…

No wide shots in the archive. Do I need to take one?

Nope …just the ticket !