distinction of building the world’s longest coke battery, with
475 ovens over 1.25 miles. The output from these ovens
reached 22,000 tons per month.
Modeling a coke battery
Flexibility is the key word when modeling a coke battery. I
built my coke battery one way, but there other options. I used
castings by Scale Model Masterpieces, the former Tom Yorke
castings. The prototype for these castings is the ovens of the
Cascade Coal and Coke Company, at Cascade in Preston County,
WV. The ovens were built in 1903.
The castings come with the doors bricked closed and have to be
opened to indicate an oven that is being charged or just pulled.
They are cast in LabStone so the material is easy to remove using
4: Tom Maule’s coke ovens under construction on his
Mann’s Creek Railway give an excellent view of the trol-
ley system used at the Sewell beehives.
Tom Maule photo.
4
