Collections Item Detail

2010.022

Neshamkin, Paul

Gift

Gift of Paul Neshamkin.

1882 - 1882

Date(s): 1882-1882

Notes: Scientific American, text on page 226, column 3 and page 227, column 1. APRIL 15, 1882. THE GRAVITY COAL PIERS AT HOBOKEN. Among the peculiar conditions of the enormous traffic in coal carried on at this port there are two which are chiefly instrumental in determining how the work must be done. The quantity of the material delivered in any unit of time is comparatively very great; and the value of the coal, compared in bulk or weight with other commodities, is very small. Hence the necessity of employing broad, cheap, and rapid methods of handling large quantities at once, with the least outlay of mechanical power and manual skill. A typical illustration of the means which have been devised for meeting the larger necessities of this great traffic may be found in the docks and piers of the Delaware, Lackawanna, and Western Railroad Co., at Hoboken. This corporation, as our readers are aware, is one of the half dozen great coal mining and transporting companies of the country. The Eastern or New York terminus of its road lies just south of Ferry street, Hoboken, occupying a large block of the made land which covers what was once a broad shallow bay between the Hoboken ferry landing and the slip of Jersey City ferry. The property outside the old shore line comprises eighty-five acres, and is divided about mid-way by a basin or dock, running back to near the line of the original shore, something over half a mile from the present river front. South of this basin lie the tracks, piers, wharves, and docks used in the coal traffic. A fair idea of the extent of these appliances for the delivery of coal may be obtained from an inspection of the larger illustrations herewith. The method of handling the coal, or, to speak more exactly, of delivering it without handling it, will need perhaps a more extended description. Standing at the point of view of Fig. 2, and looking riverward over the sea of coal cars, some full, some empty; some moving, some at rest; and, whether rolling toward the delivery piers or returning empty, nearly all pursuing their course unattended and for the most part without visible means of propulsion, it is hard to realize that the vast movement is under perfect control, and with all its seeming complication is in reality very simple. A little closer inspection will discover that the grade of all the tracks carrying loaded cars descends slightly toward the river, so that the long trains are, as it were, eagerly pushing riverward for deliverance, urged on by their own gravity. At the further end of the line car after car is seen to leave the press and (still without visible means of propulsion) to climb the steep grade to the top of the elevated pier and then roll forward along the higher level to the point of discharge. We change our point of view to the foot of the slope. Here we find a weighing shed and an engine house, in which is a stationary engine operating a cable system by means of which the cars are hauled one by one up the slope to the top of the pier. The hitching of the car to the cable, and, after weighing, its passage up the slope, are shown in Figs. 3, 4, and 5. We climb to the top of the pier, some sixty feet or so above the water. The pier carries four tracks, two descending at a slight grade toward the river end of the pier; and other two (for the return of empty cars shoreward) descending from the river end toward the original starting point over half a mile inland, the viaducts for return passing at an easy grade far to the rear of the foot of the more steeply ascending slopes. From the top of the ascending slope the pier extends a thousand feet into the Hudson, flanked on both sides by docks, in each of which float a varied fleet of canal boats, barges, schooners, square rigged vessels, and other shipping, receiving coal or waiting their turn to haul alongside the delivering chutes for the reception of a cargo. From forty to fifty vessels find berth room in each of the docks between the five coal wharves, and perhaps as many as in all of them together in the long basin first mentioned. As soon as a place is vacant at one of the chutes the brakes are loosened on three or four cars, and they move forward, as of their own volition, to the openings over the place of discharge, where they are arrested by an application of the brakes. The car has scarcely come to rest before two workmen attack the lock which holds its movable bottom in place. A sharp blow or two upon the fastening, a turn of a wrench, and the halves of the car bottom fall apart like two hinged doors, and the coal drops into the screening box leading to the iron chute which projects at a low angle from the side of the pier over the open hold or the hatchway of the vessel to be filled. At the lower end of the chute a man stands holding the end of a plank which serves as a cut-off to regulate the flow of coal by arresting its motion, so that it will fill regularly, neither overshooting its mark nor entering the hold with a momentum likely to do injury to the vessel's side or bottom. The empty car is at once set in order for the return trip, the bottom valves are closed and locked, the brakes are freed, and the car is turned over to the care of gravity to complete its circuit, guided to the right track by an automatic switch at the river end of the pier. The operation of this switch is shown in Fig. 7. At the extreme end of the pier the track rises to a buffer with a steep upward curve, which arrests the momentum which the car has acquired in running down the grade from the chute, and shifts its line of trend so that it takes the return track either at the side of the pier or in the middle, as the arrangement of tracks may determine. By this gravity system, from the time a car enters the yard loaded until it stands in line with its empty associates ready to be joined to a train returning to the mines, its circuit of a mile or more calls for human intervention only where it is attached to the cable to be hauled up the slope, and at the delivery chute where its load is almost automatically discharged. At every other point it moves unattended, rolling on a down grade by its own weight. On each side of each pier there are provided perhaps half a dozen chutes whereat vessels may be simultaneously taking in coal. Each pier has thus a capacity for discharging four hundred car loads of coal a day, or two thousand car loads may be delivered at all five piers; this with a working force, men and engines, that would be entirely inadequate by any other system. [end text on coal piers] Status: OK Status By: dw Status Date: 2010-04-08