Dorney Coal Wharf follow-up questions

[NW Mailing List]

Last month I asked about how cinders might have been handled at the main line coal wharf at Dorney (that email with details is in line below). Thanks to Ken and Larry for the earlier feedback. For those following along, I found a bit more information in the cinder section of the 1929 Maintenance Cyclopedia that is generally relevant:

Where it is necessary to clean fires on the road, which is sometimes done at water stations, the ashes may be drawn out on the track and later shoveled away. A sheet iron cover is necessary to protect the ties... (Alex Schust’s book describes this), (snip)

Though such cleaning is recognized as “sometimes” done, I’m inclined to believe it was no longer being done at Dorney by the late thirties (my period of interest), partly because the sentence above is later followed with this one: The cleaning of locomotive fires along the line of the road is often an operating necessity, although it involves some risk to traffic unless ashes receive proper attention. Such fire cleaning should be prohibited, except at designated locations between fixed limits... 

This leads be to believe that the empty hoppers on the cinder track (in the attached Barriger photo) are just empties set aside. 

On a different note, I found the attached double-entry detail on Dorney in a water supply sheet (https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=207287). It shows some of the changes that occurred over the years, such as the water supply shift from Scippo Creek to the Scioto River (which appears to be the reason for the big “X” of the first entry), and the retirement of the softener in 1941. By local newspaper accounts, the softener was installed at Dorney in 1925, and the water supply change was in 1926 or 1928 (the wharf and water station was established in 1910).

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio, US


 

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Matt Goodman <mgoodman312 at icloud.com>
> Subject: Main line Coaling Station Questions - Dorney
> Date: December 1, 2022 at 12:11:29 PM EST
> To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
> 
> 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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