Coal stage

A coaling tower, coal stage or coaling station is a facility used to load coal as fuel into railway steam locomotives. Coaling towers were often sited at motive power depots or locomotive maintenance shops.

Coaling towers were constructed of wood, steel-reinforced concrete, or steel. In almost all cases coaling stations used a gravity fed method, with one or more large storage bunkers for the coal elevated on columns above the railway tracks, from which the coal could be released to slide down a chute into the waiting locomotive's coal storage area. The method of lifting the bulk coal into the storage bin varied. The coal usually was dropped from a hopper car into a pit below tracks adjacent to the tower. From the pit a conveyor-type system used a chain of motor-driven buckets to raise the coal to the top of the tower where it would be dumped into the storage bin; a skip-hoist system lifted a single large bin for the same purpose. Some facilities lifted entire railway coal trucks or wagons. Sanding pipes were often mounted on coaling towers to allow simultaneous replenishment of a locomotive's sand box.

As railroads transitioned from the use of steam locomotives to the use of diesel locomotives in the 1950s the need for coaling towers ended. Many reinforced concrete towers remain in place if they do not interfere with operations due to the high cost of demolition incurred with these massive structures.

The sortable tables below list existing steam locomotive coaling towers, coal stages, coal docks, coal chutes, and automatic loaders with the following information when known:

Hornepayne, Ontario

Toronto, Ontario

Temuco, Chile

Tarnowskie Góry, Poland

SAR Class 25NC 3437 (4-8-4) at the coal stage at Beaconsfield, South Africa

Carnforth, United Kingdom

Didcot, United Kingdom

Immingham, United Kingdom

Cedar Hill Yard, Connecticut

Camak, Georgia

Macon, Georgia

Social Circle, Georgia

Chama, New Mexico

Bluefield, West Virginia

Hinton, West Virginia

Thurmond, West Virginia

Mescal, Arizona (demolished)

Locomotive 2576 over ash pit at the roundhouse and coaling station at the Chicago and Northwestern Railroad yards, Chicago, Illinois (demolished)

Lordsburg, New Mexico (demolished)

Collinwood Yard, Cleveland, Ohio (demolished)

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