Lite and Narrow Column - 2
Ron Pearson has drawn two tipples in the Friends of East Broad
Top’s
Timber Transfer
that include the support buildings, the
Robertsdale Number 5 and the Jollar tipple, the one featured in
this series of articles. He included all of the support buildings in
the articles and shoed how to construct them. You saw the first
of these with the scale house in the last article.
The types of support structures depend on the type of mine
that is being modeled. Shaft mines, easily identified by the tall
tower, must have a hoist house as part of the scene at a mini-
mum. A power house should also be present. A drift mine, one
that goes straight into the hillside, should have some indica-
tion of how the coal is moved from the mine to the tipple, and
the power used to move it. In most cases this is indicated by
overhead wires, and a transformer bank or a powerhouse is
needed. But if animal power was used, then, a stable would
be present instead. A slope mine, one similar to the Jack Work
tipple, needs a hoist house and a power house at a minimum
to represent the support structures.
Jollar tipple support structures
For this article, the only support items to be installed on the
tipple diorama will be the mine cars and the blacksmith/car
shop. The other structures will be mounted on ¼” foam board
for inclusion in the final scene when installed on the layout. A
map of Jollar from 1938 was used to determine their location
relative to the tipple, and I include that information here. For
example, the tracks are located on the south side of the tipple,
and the mine car scale house is located on the north side.
Mine cars
While technically not a support structure, no coal tipple scene
is complete without mine cars. I have several packages of the
BTS mine car on hand, and thought these would be adequate
for the Miller tipple. However after construction of the mine
car scale house, I discovered they are too large. In my ques-
tions with Steven Runkle, a relative of the Miller family, I was
told the mine cars were 2½ ton cars about 4’ 6” wide and 8’
long – about the same size as mine cars used in other Broad
Top mines. Models of the mine cars based on one that is on
display at Robertsdale, PA were produced in brass, but that
was in 1996, and they were expensive at the time. The old
Alexander Kanawha mine cars are now available from Tomar,
but, as with the BTS cars, they are also too large.
Using drawings from Don Heimburger’s book, “Along the East
Broad Top,” I modified the BTS cars to get the smaller mine
cars, reducing them by at least 30% and shortening the wheel-
base as with the Broad Top cars.
Begin construction of the cars by gluing the center sills into
the slots for the floor. Measure the distance between the axle
slots, and remove a scale 1’ between them, then glue them
back together. Narrow the frame of the car by measuring 6” on
each side of the slot for the ends. The line should be along the
1
1. Two BTS mine cars that have been modified to repre-
sent the smaller 2½ ton cars used at mines on the East
Broad Top next to an unmodified car for size comparison.
MRH-Oct 2014
