Grand Trunk Western Railroad Grand Haven Coal Tipple | |
Location | 300 Block of N. Harbor Dr. in Chinook Pier Park Grand Haven, Michigan |
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Coordinates | 43°4′5″N86°13′51″W / 43.06806°N 86.23083°W Coordinates: 43°4′5″N86°13′51″W / 43.06806°N 86.23083°W |
Built | 1925 |
NRHP reference # | 16000583 [1] |
Added to NRHP | September 6, 2016 |
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Grand Haven Coal Tipple is a coaling tower designed to feed coal to steam locomotives located on the 300 block of North Harbor Drive (in Chinook Pier Park) in Grand Haven, Michigan. It is the tallest structure in the city. [2] The coal tipple was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2016. [1]
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.
Grand Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Michigan and the county seat of Ottawa County, formerly known as Grand Heaven.. Grand Haven is located on the eastern shore of Lake Michigan at the mouth of the Grand River, for which it is named. As of the 2010 census, Grand Haven had a population of 10,412. It is part of the Grand Rapids Metropolitan Area, which had a population of 1,027,703 in 2014. The city is home to the Grand Haven Memorial Airpark (3GM) and is located just north of Grand Haven Charter Township.
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance. A property listed in the National Register, or located within a National Register Historic District, may qualify for tax incentives derived from the total value of expenses incurred preserving the property.
In 1869, the Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway purchased the river frontage at this location and placed their operations at this site. structures located here included a turntable, a grain elevator, an engine house, a freight warehouse, an icehouse, a depot, and a water tank. The railway underwent a series of mergers, and was eventually obtained by the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, although the subsidiary retained an independent identity. In 1902, railroad began car ferry service at this site. the In 1924-25, the railroad upgraded its Grand Haven facilities, building a 50,000 gallon water tower and this coaling station. [2]
The Detroit, Grand Haven and Milwaukee Railway is a defunct railroad which operated in the US state of Michigan during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Itself the product of several consolidations in the 1870s, it became part of the Grand Trunk Western Railroad in 1928.
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Company is an American subsidiary of the Canadian National Railway operating in Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. Since a corporate restructuring in 1971 the railroad has been under CN's subsidiary holding company the Grand Trunk Corporation. Grand Trunk Western's routes are part of CN's Michigan Division. Its primary mainline between Chicago, Illinois, and Port Huron, Michigan, serves as a connection between railroad interchanges in Chicago and rail lines in eastern Canada and the Northeastern United States. The railroad's extensive trackage in Detroit and across southern Michigan has made it an essential link for the automotive industry as a hauler of parts and automobiles from manufacturing plants.
When in use, the structure contained a hoist that provided coal to locomotives through the two steel chutes projecting from the structure. An electric motor in the adjacent engine house powered the system. In 1933, Grand Trunk Railroad transferred its ferry service to Muskegon in 1933, the coal tipple fell into disuse. In 1949, the ferry dock in Muskegon collapsed and Grand Trunk briefly re-activated the site. However, diesels replaced steam locomotives in the 1950s and no further operations took place at the tower. The steel hardware was eventually removed. Grand Trunk ceased passenger operations to Grand Haven in 1955, and in 1975 it ended freight service and abandoned the track. [2]
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Grand Haven Coal Tipple is a massive structure built from reinforced concrete, standing 79 feet high and covering an area 38 feet by 30 feet. The structure includes a large coal storage section along with a small gabled unit above that at one time housed the hoist machinery. Adjacent to the main structure is small single-story reinforced concrete power house building. Also located in the park is the Pere Marquette Railway Locomotive No. 1223, separately listed on the National Register. [2]
The first floor of the coal tipple is constructed from ten concrete piers that define three bays on the longer sides and two on the shorter. The bays are composed of arches running from pier to pier. Some bays are entirely open, while others are filled with a concrete panel. A wide horizontal concrete belt course above the arches defines the base of the structure's second level. This level has bays aligned with those on the first story, with all containing recessed rectangular planes without windows. This level originally contained coal storage. The wider central bay continues upward to form a third story with a gabled concrete roof. [2]
Eureka is a side-wheel paddle steamboat, built in 1890, which is now preserved at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park in San Francisco, California. Originally named Ukiah to commemorate the railway's recent extension into the City of Ukiah, the boat was built by the San Francisco and North Pacific Railroad Company at their Tiburon yard. Eureka has been designated a National Historic Landmark and was listed in the National Register of Historic Places on April 24, 1973.
The St. Clair Tunnel is the name for two separate rail tunnels which were built under the St. Clair River between Sarnia, Ontario and Port Huron, Michigan. It was the first full-size subaqueous tunnel built in North America. It is a National Historic Landmark of the United States, and has been designated a civil engineering landmark by both US and Canadian engineering bodies.
The Grand Trunk Western Railroad Depot is a former railway depot located at 520 State Street in Port Huron, Michigan. It has been converted into a museum. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1977.
The Niles Canyon Railway (NCRy) is a heritage railway running through Niles Canyon, between Sunol and the Niles district of Fremont in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States. The railway is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Niles Canyon Transcontinental Railroad Historic District. The railroad is operated and maintained by the Pacific Locomotive Association which preserves, restores and operates historic railroad equipment. The NCRy features public excursions with both steam and diesel locomotives along a well-preserved portion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. The Golden Gate Railroad Museum moved its collection from San Francisco to the NCRy in 2007 for storage and limited operations after their home at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard was shut down for redevelopment.
The Grand Trunk Milwaukee Car Ferry Company was the Grand Trunk Western Railroad's subsidiary company operating its Lake Michigan railroad car ferry operations between Muskegon, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, from 1905 to 1978. Major railroad companies in Michigan used rail ferry vessels to transport rail cars across Lake Michigan from Michigan's western shore to eastern Wisconsin to avoid rail traffic congestion in Chicago.
The Pere Marquette 1223 is a steam locomotive on permanent display in Grand Haven, Michigan. She is one of two surviving Pere Marquette 2-8-4 (Berkshire) engines. No parts from 1223 were used to restore sister engine 1225 to operating condition, due to the objections of the Michigan Railroad Club, then unofficial custodians of the engine. The MSU Railroad Club did hold some successful fundraising events at the 1223 during the State Fair. That money was used in the restoration of the 1225.
Longworth Hall is a registered historic building in Cincinnati, Ohio, listed in the National Register on December 29, 1986. Constructed by the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1904 as the B & O Freight Terminal, the building was reported to be the largest structure of its type in the world at 5 stories high and 1,277 feet (389 m) long. Camden Yards in Baltimore is a similar structure.
The Toledo, Saginaw and Muskegon Railway is a defunct railroad incorporated in January, 1886. The railroad offered service between Ashley, Michigan and Muskegon, Michigan starting on August 1, 1888. The Grand Trunk Railway of Canada took control the same day, but the company did not merge with the Grand Trunk Western Railway until 1928.
The Hartford & New Haven Railroad Freight Depot is a historic building at 40 Mechanic Street in downtown Windsor, Connecticut, across the street from the equally historic Hartford & New Haven Railroad Depot. Built about 1870, it is a well-preserved example of a Gothic Revival freight depot. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1988. It is now the home of the Windsor Arts Center, a non-profit place that exhibits the work of visual and performing artists.
Grand Rapids, Grand Haven and Muskegon Railway Depot is a historic railway station for the Grand Rapids, Grand Haven and Muskegon Railway in Coopersville, Michigan. The Coopersville Area Historical Society and Museum is now housed in the station.
The Beaumont St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad Water Tank is a railroad water tank constructed in 1875, in Beaumont, Kansas. It served the St. Louis, Wichita & Western Railway, and was used to refill the boilers of steam locomotives on that line. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1993.
Mount Clemens station is a historic railroad depot located at 198 Grand Street in Mt. Clemens, Michigan. Young Thomas Edison learned telegraphy at this station. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981 as the Grand Trunk Western Railroad, Mount Clemens Station and designated a Michigan State Historic Site in 1973. It is now operated as the Michigan Transit Museum.
Ashley Planes was a historic freight cable railroad situated along three separately powered inclined plane sections located between Ashley, Pennsylvania at the foot, and via the Solomon cutting the yard in Mountain Top over 1,000 feet (300 m) above and initially built between 1837-38 by Lehigh Coal & Navigation Company's subsidiary Lehigh and Susquehanna Railroad (LH&S). One result of the 1837 updates of omnibus transportation bills called the Main Line of Public Works (1824), the legislation was undertaken with an eye to enhance and better connect eastern settlement's business interests with newer mid-western territories rapidly undergoing population explosions in the Pre-Civil War era. But those manufactories needed a source of heat, and the Northern Pennsylvania Coal Region was barely connected to eastern markets except by pack mule, or only through long and arduous routes down the Susquehanna then overland to Philadelphia.
The Fremont, Elkhorn & Missouri Valley Railroad Passenger Depot, also known as the Chicago and North Western Railway Passenger Depot and presently as the Douglas Railroad Interpretive Center, was built in 1886 in Douglas, Wyoming to accommodate traffic on the Fremont, Elkhorn and Missouri Valley Railroad's (FE&MV) terminus at the newly built town. The depot was built as a fairly small, cautious investment in a possibly ephemeral frontier town. Immediately following the completion of the depot Douglas saw an epidemic of typhoid fever and the worst winter in a generation, and the railroad decided to push on to Casper for its terminus. The town's population declined from 1600 in 1886 to 900 in 1888. By 1891 Owen Wister reported that Douglas had a population of about 350. However, by 1910 Douglas had 2246 residents and hosted the Wyoming State Fair. The presence of the fair stimulated rail traffic, while the FE&MV merged with the Cheyenne and Northern Railway in 1903. In 1905 oil development started. In the 1950s coal mining began for the Dave Johnson Power Plant and the railway expanded its Douglas facilities to accommodate the traffic, closing the original depot and building a larger facility. The depot was acquired from the railroad's successor, the Chicago and North Western Railway, by the city in 1990.
The Union Depot is a railway station located at 610 Western Avenue in Muskegon, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It is now the Muskegon County Convention & Visitor's Bureau.
The Piers and Revetments at Grand Haven, Michigan are navigational structures located at the mouth of the Grand River in Grand Haven, Michigan. The structures were listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.
The Holly Union Depot is a former train station located at 223 South Broad Street in Holly, Michigan. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000. It sits at the junction of tracks which are now owned by CSX Transportation and Canadian National Railway.