Hornby Magazine - showing you how...

Coaling up

Following the introduction of Hornby’s locomotive coaling stage to the Skaledale range, MIKE WILD shows how it can be simply included in a locomotive shed scene to grace any model railway.

Hornby’s range of Skaledale buildings have revolutionised railway modelling, particularly for new starters. The range continues to expand unabated and includes housing, railway structures such as goods sheds, locomotive sheds and smaller lamp huts, the impressive gas works set (see reviews) and many more items.

In April Hornby released what is, perhaps, one of its most impressive building sets in the locomotive coal drops. The coal drop was a common feature of the steam era locomotive shed, but until now anyone who wanted to include such a feature on their layout had to turn to kit or scratch-building. Now though, it is a very different story.

The set of five buildings – four base units and the coal drop including internal stage – has been finished in a light red brick colour. The model isn’t based on any particular building, but is representative of a generic coaling stage - and at xxft (672mm) long it allows modellers a simple way of introducing this common shed feature to a layout with a minimal amount of physical modelling work.

In total the set of five buildings cost £69.25, which on the face of it seems expensive. But, look at it this way. If you built a kit and ‘paid yourself’ £5 an hour to build it, a coal drop would probably cost you more from a kit. And besides, the £70 is still less than many ready-to-run locomotives and the Skaledale buildings have the bonus of being complete from the moment you open the box.

What is a coal drop?

Coal drops were used to load locomotive tenders with coal by the most common force known to man – gravity. Loaded coal wagons would be propelled up an incline to the coaling stage which was raised above ground level, usually, on a brick plinth. Coal was then loaded into the tenders of locomotives waiting below on an adjacent line.

The coal drop saved hours of back breaking work to load locomotive tenders and the vast majority of major sheds would have such a facility. Not all coal drops were the same though. Different railway companies used their own particular designs, but all were used in the same manner.

For the full story see HM August/September 2007 p42-45.