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Thursday, September 21, 2023

Sprague Coal


I've always thought this would make a neat scene from Providence, RI. There's a lot of background and (potential) history here - essentially centered on the connection between the proposed Southern New England and the C&O. (Hint: There's a reason the book on the Southern New England has a jacket painting featuring a coal train). I could go into more detail on that at some future date if there is any interest. 



8 comments:

  1. Very neat scene, and I do get the coal connection history.
    I was particularly pleased to see the whaleback barge moored to coal pier. A number of these migrated from the Great Lakes to the East Coast after they became uneconomic on the lakes.

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  2. That area is now Collier Point Park. There are some of the old coal equipment on display there. Love the story of the SNE. Living in RI you can still see a lot of the infrastructure from when they were building it. I am in the process of building a switching layout based on Allens Ave.area and it's street running, but instead of NH, it will be SNE.

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  3. This is a very cool scene which I would like to reproduce as I will be modeling the New Haven from New London to Providence. I will be including as many 1950's era industries as I can. One of the things I have also wanted to include is shipping to other New England modelers industries as destinations off line. Thanks for posting.

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  4. Was New River Coal the only coal vendor there on the Providence River? I know in the 1970's that that pier was gone but there was a large crane over the water for transferring coal to ships or barges.

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  5. https://www.golocalprov.com/business/collier-the-citys-coolest-parkarchitecture-critic-morgan

    There is a picture of Curran & Burton coal in Providence in this link. I think it might be next to the photo Marty posted.

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  6. Of course you could always go with this too. It was right between the NEC and Pascaog branch,

    https://artinruins.com/property/blue-coal/

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  7. Just noticed, if you zoom in the modern picture you can see the rail bed where the Pascoag branch curved off the upper right. The tracks are still in the street there.

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  8. Very cool stuff! Thanks for sharing these links!!

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