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<DIV><FONT face="Trebuchet MS">Bluefield Daily Telegraph<BR>February 26,
1909</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV align=center><FONT size=4>MOST MODERN COAL LOADING PLANT</FONT></DIV>
<DIV align=center>------</DIV>
<DIV align=center><STRONG>New Pier at Tidewater Terminus of Virginian Railway
Will be Opened for Business April 1</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV align=left> </DIV>
<DIV align=left> On April 1st the new, modern coal pier at the
tidewater terminus of the Virginian railway, now nearing completion, will be
opened for business. The pier is said to be the most modern coal loading
plant on the Atlantic seaboard, and in its arrangement, construction and
equipment many innovations are noted.</DIV>
<DIV align=left> The pier proper, reaching from the head of
the incline to the sea end, is just a little over 1,000 feet long. It is
seventy feet high and sixty-five feet wide, and in its length the track drops
six or seven feet, which gives sufficient gravity to have the coal cars move in
that direction.</DIV>
<DIV align=left> Over 6,000 tons of steel were used in the
construction of this mammoth, modern pier. The pier was designed by H.
Fernstrom, chief engineer of the Virginian railway, and the special machinery
and equipment was built to conform with his plans.</DIV>
<DIV align=left> The dumping machine will handle a fifty-ton
railroad car every two minutes. This will permit of 15,000 tons of coal
being handled over the pier in a ten-hour day. For 300 working days in a
year this would mean the dumping of something like 4,500,000 tons.</DIV>
<DIV align=left> The new pier is very desirably situated as to
water conveniences. It is some five or six miles nearer the ocean than the
Norfolk and Western coal piers, which will mean a slight saving in time.
All the slips at which vessels will lay when being coaled, or in taking cargoes,
are dredged to a depth of thirty feet, and this depth obtains all the way to the
pier from the channel. In fact, it is claimed that the new pier is so
advantageously located that vessels can dock at any hour, day or night, as the
occasion may necessitate. The new piers are just west of the site of the
Jamestown exposition [<EM>of 1907</EM>]<EM>,</EM> and are directly across the
bay from Newport News.</DIV>
<DIV align=center>------</DIV>
<DIV align=left>[<EM>In his book on the N&W, Richard E. Prince describes VGN
Coal Pier 1 as a, "High level type with rotary dumpers on shore for loading
electric conveyor cars that were barneyed up to the deck." He lists 1960
as the date retired.</EM>]</DIV>
<DIV align=left> </DIV>
<DIV align=left><FONT face=Script size=6>Gordon
Hamilton</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>