Main line Coaling Station Questions - Dorney

[NW Mailing List]

Hi all. 

I’ve been interested in the Dorney coal wharf / coaling station for a couple of years. This was a main line wharf between Hayesville and Circleville on the Scioto District. 

I have a pretty good sense of the physical plant setup used at terminals, but I’m much less clear on how cinder/ash was handled at main line wharfs. I frankly wouldn’t have thought ashes being dumped in transit it except for two items:

Alex Schust’s book on the Scioto Division reports that the wharf had a 165’ pan spiked to the ties (for ash?) and a 102’ x 2’ “ash platform" 
A 1910 map of the facility shows a track labeled “cinder track” on the east side of the wharf. The track is about 25 feet from the nearest main, and is depressed.

My questions are:
How did the ashes from all four tracks get to the distant cinder track? Given the early era, I can picture some poor sap (or saps) having to do things manually from the nearest track, but hauling cinders across three tracks and the raised center delivery track seems overly dangerous.
What is a cinder platform

I’ve attached two photos for context. The first is a crop from a very early photo (pre-WW1) that shows the Dorney setup nicely. This is sourced from Facebook via a very active N&W fan from Switzerland! No photographer is listed, but it seems to be a company photo.  The cinder track is out of view on the right. Interestingly, the pans described in Alex’s book are nowhere in sight.

The second photo is a crop from a Barriger photo taken in the early 1930’s. It shows a hopper car on the depressed cinder track. I wonder if the track was being used for other purposes by this time as it would be hard to manually load a car that tall. 

Thoughts welcome!

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio, US



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