Pit at the Dorney Coaling Station

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Hello list.

A couple of days ago I spent several hours talking to a friend who worked on N&W’s Columbus District between about 1971 and 1984.  For a couple of years in that stretch he was an engineer on the Circleville Job, switching out the various industries in and immediately south of that city. Dorney’s former center siding was the staging location for inbound and outbound cars.

He said that there was a long concrete pit between one of the mains and the center siding.  He estimated it being several hundred feet long, about man-deep and gage-wide, and very similar to an inspection pit.  Images show that the coal supply track was between the mains, so my guess was it had something to do with dropping and conveying coal to the coal dock. However, his description makes it much longer than I would have expected a pit for this purpose to be.

Any ideas?  Here’s an image of Dorney from the archives, for reference: http://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=74544 

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio, US