A Real, Honest-to-Goodness C&S Coal Shed

[Keith Hayes]

I need to build a structure to hide a frog juicer. Espee says my layout is boring,  and I hope this will lead him to change his mind. At least a little.

Step 1-Get the plans.

(Thanks Jim for posting these in the Documents on the main page!)

Step 2-Stain some wood (then take a nap).


Step 3-Start the walls.


Step 4-Add the framing.

[Keith Hayes]

Step 5-Looking like a shed with a floor

[Keith Hayes]

Step 6-A test fit

[Paul R.]

Looking good, now I know where to look if I want some! Paul R.

[South Park]

  Aren't you worried your little guys will hurt themselves working
around those giant razor blades ?  OSHA would have a fit !  

[John Greenly]

Great! nice shed, Keith!  I was looking at those outbuilding plans a while ago and wondered what the two openings shown in the coal shed roof were for.   Can someone explain?

Cheers,
John

by the way, I definitely have you beat for layout boring-ness:  mine's just a single piece of track about 6' long with an 18" radius curve at one end.  There is a certain element of suspense while running toward that curve waiting for shorts or derailments, but your turnout to the abyss is much more mysteriously fascinating ;)

[Keith Hayes]

John,I am staining the wood for the hatches as I type. Well, actually I am waiting for the stain to dry.

These sheds faced the track with the roof sloping toward the track. The hatch in the roof allowed coal to be shoveled from an adjacent car.

The Banta model (Based on an RGS prototype?) is similar. The Crystal River model has doors high in the trackside wall for loading. The D&RGW coal sheds extant at Chama and Cumbres have a single door and the coal is both loaded and removed from the door. There are slats to hold the coal in as it is placed. The Crystal River models are excellent,  incidentally, with fine laser cut parts and neat templates to aid construction.

I have not looked closely,  but I believe the Leadville depot had a smaller coal shed, though I may be mistaking the privy for coal. All groups of railroad buildings in our era will feature both (cue Chris and an amazing photo essay!)

Speaking of Leadville and privys: my Great-Grandmother lived there through the early 70s, and. Mom reports that when she had a privy, it was over a mine shaft. I suspect it did not fill before she got indoor plumbing.

[John Greenly]

Thanks Keith!  Was the coal in the shed used for stoves in the buildings?  That's quite a big shed, but the winters were very long and cold.

John

My village here in upstate NY has a bunch of houses from the Greek Revival period 1830's-'40s   There were some spectacular privies. One, sadly now gone, had Doric columns and a full pediment framing the door, a veritable Parthenon of a privy.  

[Jim Courtney]

Hey John,

The small shed adjacent to the Kokomo depot, that you discussed on that thread, was likely another version of a depot coal shed, explaining the small doors, perhaps an early standard design from UP days. Probably didn't need to fill it with coal but once or twice a winter.

Yes, the coal was used for the depot waiting room and office stoves; cook stoves if there were living quarters for the agent.

The door on the rear of the shed in the Kokomo depot rear view probably also served the two car bodies for section crews.

I don't know how the C&S did it, but the RGS had a designated low side coal car for depot and section house heating coal. It might be handled in a freight, spotted next to the shed for the section crew to fill the coal shed, then moved on to the next location.

The D&RG seems to have had two coal shed at Kokomo, one for the depot and one for the section houses:


Chris Walker enlargement . . . Jim lables



That's a great little coal shed there Keith, I can imagine a C&S section house or car body nearby, out of sight in the aisle.

[Keith Hayes]

Last step-roof hatches and ties for foundations per the drawing.

This was a fun project.I will add some hinges on the hatches and give the structure a bath in coal dust, followed by some dull coat. It is more than large enough to conceal the frog juicer.

Other coal storage for reference.

The Banta kit at Cloud City Coal:


The Crystal River kit at the Arkansas Valley Smelter:


And the Chama coal shed by Crystal River:

Note the nice slat detail at the door. Better set some slats to the side when this model finds its resting spot on the layout.

[John Greenly]

Thanks Keith and Jim for the coal shed enlightenment!  Keith, your models are all great, that little Chama shed with the slats is a real gem. I might have to make one like that someday.  I remember a shed rather like that here in my village that was finally knocked down maybe 30 years ago.  Never realized that it was likely for coal.  My own house still has the remnants of the hatch and chute that sent coal down into the basement in times past, and I still find lumps of good old Pennsylvania hard coal here and there.  Maybe I'll use a bit of that to fill a model shed.

John

[jim pallow]

       On the photo the tall side of the coal shed is to the track.  Is there something I'm not seeing?

[Keith Hayes]

Paul, in that case the loading occurs on the high side of the track wall.

[Jim Courtney]

The Kokomo agent likely had to walk across the track periodically with a coal bucket (what do you call those things?) to take stored coal back into the depot to keep the stoves burning. Probably used the same door as was used to unload the coal from a gon on the siding.

[Bill Uffelman]

Coal  scuttle = coal bucket = coal pail = hod

Bill Uffelman

On Sunday, September 16, 2018, 11:36:12 AM PDT, Jim Courtney [via C&Sng Discussion Forum] <[hidden email]> wrote:

The Kokomo agent likely had to walk across the track periodically with a coal bucket (what do you call those things?) to take stored coal back into the depot to keep the stoves burning. Probably used the same door as was used to unload the coal from a gon on the siding.

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