concrete coaling tower gets filled how?

Garrett:

Good question. I had to look real close than do a google search to confirm. If you look behind the top tower you will see the frame for a pulley system. It looks like an outdoor pulley/bucket system. What I can't see is whether it extends to the coal box on the ground though there are other pictures on the internet showing the framing extending to ground.

Joe

coaling tower

From here:

"The workings of a coaling towers are relatively simple. They were always gravity fed with the steam locomotive sitting below or nearby (if the tower employed chutes) and an operator would feed coal into the tender until it was topped off. To refill the towers they usually had a staging track or an area where loaded hopper cars could be unloaded and a pulley/belt driven system would pick up the coal and load the bin. Early systems were rudimentary using straight chain and pulley buckets but later systems used conveyor belts to efficiently load the coaling towers. "

Really early systems had a long ramp to an elevated track (not many model layouts will want to give up that much real estate) from which hopper cars were dumped into coal boxes or directly into tenders.

Basically:

With variations due to design and location.

Rusty

Very simple!  This is NOT suppose to be a large coaling tower.  It is representative of about of a 150 ton (at best or smaller) coaling tower.  If you look you see that Lionel did not have loading chute(s) directly under the tower.  With these smaller towers the coal is dumped into the coal bunker directly under the tower.  The skip-hoist bucket digs into the coal in the bunker then trolleys it up the "track" alone the tower side and dumps the coal into the tower.

Ron

When Lionel separated the original kit, it was missing some key pieces. I have the original release and when I built it, compared to the Walthers HO style kit which was similar, the Walthers kit shows the coaling operation more complete.... the hopper house is elevated and the buckets and coal pit is included...

So, the short answer to my original post is that the referenced Lionel coaling tower 6-83490 incompletely represents a coaling station

Garrett76 posted:

So, the short answer to my original post is that the referenced Lionel coaling tower 6-83490 incompletely represents a coaling station

You got it.

Suggest you get a copy of the booklet "Steam Locomotive Coaling Stations and ... ." 

So you're telling me Lionel inaccurately represented somethings? For shame!

If your're limited for space like we were/are, the "pit" is directly under the tower so the cars are spotted underneath the tower. 

J Daddy posted:

When Lionel separated the original kit, it was missing some key pieces. I have the original release and when I built it, compared to the Walthers HO style kit which was similar, the Walthers kit shows the coaling operation more complete.... the hopper house is elevated and the buckets and coal pit is included...

 

Garrett76 posted:

So, the short answer to my original post is that the referenced Lionel coaling tower 6-83490 incompletely represents a coaling station

Great question Garrett. And J Daddy, knew the Lionel tower looked familiar. Would have been a killer piece with "buckets" and all. Maybe we'll model one as abandoned and used for sand with pipes

Great question and answers!  I happened to live in coal country with coaling towers and tipples all around and just thought everyone knew how they operated.  

MY BAD and my ignorance.

nice answers, everyone.  my original post was about missing elements of the Lionel product