March 2011

March 2011 The old St. Nicholas Coal Breaker was at one time the largest and most productive coal breaker in the world; divided into two separate halves that could be run independently—each producing 12,500 tons of coal per day, the plant producing 25,000 tons of coal per day when running at full capacity. It had a single-hopper dumper building feeding its conveyor with two dumping bays. The left or west side of the building accommodated coal hopper cars with bottom dump doors or dump truck loads; the right and east track was a rotary dumper, capable of holding down and rotating two forty-foot hoppers on its dumper tracks. Constructed on…