Evening public ledger. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1914-1942, 1914-10-08
PLANT HERE BREAKS
ALL PORT RECORDS
FOR COAL HANDLING
PHILADELPHIA AS CAUGHT BY CAMERA
Fifty-6ve Hundred Tons
Dumped Into Steamships
Hold in Four Hours and a
Half by New Method.

| All records for coal handling at this
! port were broken when $500 tons Of cargo
and bunker coal were dumped into the hold
| of the steamship Castle Bruce In four
hours and thirty minutes.
| The vessel pulled up alongside the
| Pennsylvania Railroad coal docks at
| Greenwich piers at o'clock one morning
recently and the work OF loading was Inn
nediately begun. At precisely 3 o'clock
In the afternoon the Castle Bruce was
ready for sea. Under ordinary conditions
she would have been ready an hour and
a half earlier. but this time was taken
in shifting the vessel about the dock,
and in 1t was included also the lunch
hour Of the men on the job.
Some years ago 400 tons of coal were
! loaded into a vessel at this port in IA
I4ours. This was considered remark
able record throughout the country. With
the construction here just one year ago
of the Eastern Coal Dock Company's coal"
handling plant there came complete
revolution in the methods OF handling
coal, and this port now is the only one
on the Atlantic coast capable Of handling
NA'N'1N-~-N~'~'T
shIpment by scientific handling methods.
Some idea Of the saving In time ef-
fected by the coal bumper at Green
wich Point may be formed from the Fact
that 30 ships Of various tonnages can
be handled at the plant in one day and
thN a carload of coal can be dumped
into a vessel in about a minute and
half. as against an hour under the old
method OF loading. In handling the plant
I25 men now do the work It took 800
workmen to handle under the old system.
The first day the plant was put into
operation six cars OF coal were dumped.
The average now is from 400 to $50 cars
a day, or more than 1900 tons an hour.
Greenwich yards have been for many
years the point at which the Pennsylvania
Railroad has loaded into ocean-going ves-
sells the coal consigned from the mines
along its lines to foreign or coastwise
ports Until the new coal dumped was
installed ships were loaded entirely from
piers of the usual wooden trestle variety.
Into bins In these piers the coal is
dumped from hopper cars thence being
discharged, by gravity, through wooden
chutes which direct the streams of coal
through the matches of the vessel.
While this, under modern conditions,
is not the most economic and efficient
method Of transferring coal from the
cars to the vessels the additional OBJ
lection frequently is urged that by reason
of the sheer drop from the end OF the
chute to the bottom OF the hold con-
siderable amount of breakage necessarily
occurs, which briugs about an appreciable
degree of deterioration in the quality ana
consequently in the value of the coal.
The new mechanical bumper is especially
designed to eliminate the possibility of
such breakage, being provided with q
chute of telescope construction.
BY means OF cables which control its
three members the length OF this chute
may be adjusted 10 conform to the depth
of any vessel, and, n result the coal
passes through the bottom of the hOld
in compact mass. AS the hold becomes
filled the length of the chute is shortened
and thus the coal, during the entire load
ing operation flows, rather than DROPS
into the hold. The wooden piers, which
formerly constituted the entire loading
facilities, now are employed only when
business is so brisk that the machine Is
unable TO do all of the work The piers
are four in numbers; they have an aegre-
gate capacity for loading lS,0OO gross
tons in 10 hours, while by adding a
night shift the capacity may be stretched
out TO 5000 tons.