Montour Railroad 



Montour Railroad

Mileposts

Bridges and Tunnels

History

Maps

Roster

Mines

Links

Gallery

Working on the Montour

Schaeffer Stories

Sposato Stories

Employees

Railroading 101

 

 



Champion Coal Prep Plant

One of the major industries on the Montour was the coal cleaning plant at Champion. This plant kept the Montour busy into it's last days. When the plant was idled so was the Montour.
After shoving "coal to the hill"  at Champion with Jack Harvard & Jim Lane, Nick Jarina aim's his camera at the dump track where "stop off" coal is being run through the one car rotary dump. The Dump Track typically holds ten  70 ton hoppers to clearance.
 
The P&LE SW-1500 is on the Shove-up track heading back down towards the Montour R.R. Yard office.  The top conveyor is for the Reclaim pile which is used when the preparation plant is broke down or not running, railroad car loads of stop of coal can still be emptied (dumped) releasing the railroad cars from per diem. The lower all blue conveyor is the long slate belt that went up the hill & crossed over route 980. Before the slate belt was built, the Montour R.R. operated a side dump train that ran back & forth between where the current slate belt is located, and Boggs where slate was shoved out and dumped. - Gene P. Schaeffer
Photo taken in 1950 by my grandfather who was a mining engineer. Perhaps it's the earliest color photos of the plant. - Kenneth Caine
Another photo taken in 1950 by my grandfather who was a mining engineer. Perhaps it's the earliest color photos of the plant. - Kenneth Caine
On close inspection there are some old plant ruins.
More ruins and an old coal pile

Here's what the area looks like today.