10-21-2011, 07:56 AM
What year are you modelling? What year is the photo you are referencing? Coal as a home heating fuel was beginning to be replaced in the 1950s by oil. As this happened, the dealers got more and more into other bulk goods, like salt, gravel & sand, and so on (as noted above by e-paw).
With as large a facility as you describe, they had either many, many residential customers, or perhaps some industrial or commercial customers too. Many institutions would have had central heating plants, requiring perhaps daily deliveries of large amounts of coal. The largest may have been directly rail served, but this was not always practical.
This link (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.railways.incanada.net/map/GTRsidingsplan.html">http://www.railways.incanada.net/map/GT ... splan.html</a><!-- m -->) showing a map of Ottawa, Canada in 1918 (population approx 100,000) indicates that there were 7 coal sidings, and it is likely that some of the other unspecified sidings and team track may have handled coal as well. That's approximately 25% of all sidings in Ottawa at the time.
Andrew
With as large a facility as you describe, they had either many, many residential customers, or perhaps some industrial or commercial customers too. Many institutions would have had central heating plants, requiring perhaps daily deliveries of large amounts of coal. The largest may have been directly rail served, but this was not always practical.
This link (<!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.railways.incanada.net/map/GTRsidingsplan.html">http://www.railways.incanada.net/map/GT ... splan.html</a><!-- m -->) showing a map of Ottawa, Canada in 1918 (population approx 100,000) indicates that there were 7 coal sidings, and it is likely that some of the other unspecified sidings and team track may have handled coal as well. That's approximately 25% of all sidings in Ottawa at the time.
Andrew