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| Robert Niesyn commented on Brian M Fox's posting |
I save a satellite image because it better captures that this tower still has its metal pieces including a skip hoist track and a spiral staircase.
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| 3D Satellite |
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| Viral Media posted One of the ten Baldwin Hudsons built in 1937 for the New Haven Railroad prepares to work the 155 miles to Boston from New Haven, Connecticut. Circa 1939. Photo Credit to Brian Stephenson. |
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| Stu Nicholson posted The massive, old coaling tower at the former New Haven Railroad yards at New Haven, CT in the 1970's. (From an old Kodak Ektachrome slide) |
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| John Lott posted Old Coaling Tower, Ceder Hill Yard. New Haven, CT Dennis DeBruler: It is not unusual to see a concrete coaling tower still standing. But it is very rare to see one that still has all of its metal attachments. |
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| Will Dering commented on a post New Haven Connecticut at Cedar Hill yard (Amtrak). This one will be 100 years old in 2026. Once served 5 tracks. Beautiful structure. NOT publicly accessible. Far into the yard with cameras and police patrols. But visible from all over the area. |
Niel Fenn Davis posted three photos with the comment: "NYNH&H Railroads Cedar Hill yards, there was once 2 roundhouses here, Cedar Hill was once the largest railroad yard on the east coast, it covered 800 ac , this is just a small corner of it."
[The coaling tower has been declared a state historical site.]
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| 1 Dennis DeBruler HAER CONN,5-NEWHA,37- |
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| 2 Dennis DeBruler HAER CONN,5-NEWHA,37- |
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| 3 Dennis DeBruler HAER CONN,5-NEWHA,37- Niel Fenn Davis: Dennis DeBruler theses photos are part of the Dodd library collection at UCONN along with all the NYNH&H Railroad corporation archives |
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| Niel Fenn Davis commented on his post here’s a map of the yards , I believe it’s from the early 50s |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Niel's post HAER CONN,5-NEWHA,37- |
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| Dennis DeBruler commented on Niel's post Zooming in on the coaling tower because the dump pit and skip hoist are exposed. |
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| Tim Starr posted Cedar Hill yard and roundhouse terminal of the New York, New Haven & Hartford outside of New Haven CT, built new in 1912. |
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| safe_image for Mike Robbins Flickr New Haven Railroad Caboose C-633, along with another, brings up the end of a manifest freight train that is in the Cedar Hill Yard at New Haven, Connecticut, July 1967 New Haven Railroad Caboose C-633, along with another, brings up the end of a manifest freight train that is moving in the Cedar Hill Yard at New Haven, Connecticut, July 1967. In the background you can see the old coaling tower that's' no long required for steam locomotive service. To the left there is a lone caboose with white flags mounted to indicate an extra assignment. The name of the photographer that captured this image on film is unknown. The photo came from my collection. Copyright Disclaimer under Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for the purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use. |
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| Christopher John Zyrlis posted Cedar Hill Coal Tower in New Haven, CT. Formerly of the NY, NH & H RR. Photo courtesy of my father, John Zyrlis. Ralph Young: Per the looks of the red sign - -it may have been made by same company as made the one at Rankin Bottoms in East Tennessee - Roberts and Schaefer Co. Tim Shanahan shared |
A ghost of the partial roundhouse still exists.
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Friends of Cedar Hill yard posted five photos with the comment:
Westbound Hump terminal complex restoration for the five buildings project planning,.“The HUMP”Project list,.Retarder tower CSome cars would get up too much speed if it wasn’t for the retarders.A device for checking the speed of the car.The purpose of the retarder Towers it’s to govern the speed electronically of the retarders. Electric control switches Direct cars to the right track were there join up other cars to make new trains for other destinations,.Cedar Hill Yard Will be the largest freight classification yard in the east to have automatic retarded. The use of the retarders will speed the moving freight cars by one hour each, The value of this is seen as over 1.2 million cars were classified in 1928 at cedarhill yard,.narration by Lowell ThomasNew Haven RailroadRestoration plan,.First things first, for safety, we need to have a structural engineer come out and take a look at the building, to see what the structural integrity is our mission is to restore it back to its original condition with original interiors, that operate,..The retarder,we think that’s the only one left, we’re not quite sure how to fix it, we feel we’re gonna need a engineering survey to figure out exactly how the mechanisms work and how to connect it back up to the tower,We also have to consider the fact of all utilities have to be reconnected as well.
Matt Chase shared
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I spent more time looking for this tower than I care to admit. This topo map taught me to search east of the Quincy River instead of where the coaling tower is.
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| 1954 Branford and New Haven Quads @ 1:24,000 |
And the photos taught me to look in among the trees. But this is the only structure I found.
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| 3D Satellite |
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| Friends of Cedar Hill yard posted [The text has too many problems to copy. You can always click the post's link.] Bud DeGennaro: The fire was in the Summer of 1975, the day before it was to receive it's Historic Place designation. Anastasia Trucking wanted the site for a transload facility. It was demolished right after the fire so even the remains couldn't be documented. I'm a lifelong fan of the New Haven and was devaststed when the Roundhouse was set ablaze. I was still living on Fox Street and walked to Middletown Ave but the Cattails were over my head and I couldn't see anything. I didn't try to find the remains from the "Railroad Dump"-an access road to the Rail Cropping shop and other places that were patrolled. People just dumped stuff along the right side os the road. To the left was a track that led to the Main line. Matthew Chase shared |
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| Friends of Cedar Hill yard commented on their post |
Friends of Cedar Hill yard posted four images with the comment:
Artifact departmentThe Coaling Tower storyI feel one of the best stories that has come out on the coaling tower was from the New Haven technical society, we will follow their narration,…By A.A. LawrenceFor those readers who are not familiar with the operations of a locomotive coaling tower, The following sequences of events will provide an idea of what went on in the vicinity of these concrete monuments…The wooden shed shown on the East elevation was built straddling two tracks which ran along the top of the embankment. This embankment was perhaps four or five feet above the surrounding yard and ran for quite a distance in both directions from the tower.The two tracks passing over an open pit in the shed where hopper cars discharged their loads of coal into a receiving hopper.Below The receiving hopper was a loading pit which in turn discharge into either or both of two four-wheeled cable hoisted buckets. These buckets were similar in appearance to drag-line Bucket except for the four wheels. The two front, or upper, wheels rode on the lower of the two rails and the two rare, or lower, wheels rode on the upper rails. The Cedar Hill yard facility was equipped with two hoist systems each having a single bucket.The capacity of the bucket is not was not known at this time but, judging from a sketch shown in a Roberts & Schaefer advertisement in the December 3, 1932, issue of railway age, A typical bucket holds from 2 to 2 1/2 tons of coal.The cables which hoist the Bucket what’s attached to a rectangular yoke which was pinned to the rare, or lower, end of the bucket in such A manner that as the bucket reaches The top of the incline a fitting on the upper side of the yoke engaged a “U” shaped handles on the door covered the opening at the top of the tower.As the door was opened upwards the front wheels of the bucket followed The curves of the lower rails over the edge of the opening. At the same time the hoist yoke continues to pull the rear wheels up until the bucket was turned upside down dumping the load of coal into the crusher.The bucket then rolled back down into the loading pit for another charge.Our rough calculations indicate that the cedar Hilliard Tower had a 1500 ton capacity. Assuming that 100 locomotives were served daily with ten tons of coal per locomotive, you can see that continuous operation of the coal hoist was a certainty.Mere hoisting of the the Call to the top of the Tower was only one function of this unit. The coal was intentionally dumped into the crusher which proceeded to reduce the lump size coal to a smaller manageable size. This operated usually took place in the sloped roof portion of The tower.A third operation was the storage of dry sand in a large circular tower located in the center of the main structure. From here the sand was piped to The top of the tower, probably by compressed air, and then gravity fed to the Sandline in the south elevation of the tower.We at the Friends are so gathering information, on the Roundhouse coaling tower set,. To determine the best avenue to take,. With this very unique piece of property,..
Matthew Chase shared
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| 4 Thomas Dorman: Maybe an earlier coaling tower was built in 1911. This tower was built by Roberts & Schaefer in 1927, 2,400 tons capacity. |
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| Friends of Cedar Hill yard commented on Thomas' comment |
Friends of Cedar Hill yard posted three images with the comment:
“Let’s talk about the mystery photo”Because this photo has gained a lot of attention, let’s take a closer look, this is not the “West Hump” this is the Eastbound Hump yard, on the Conrail/ CSX side of the yard,I would ask everybody to reference, The New Haven terminal, homework documents,Maps zone AWhat I highlighted in yellow is the hump for the eastbound yard this hump stayed in operations right up until the early 80s, then it was abandoned and completely torn out. Conrail was so complete and tearing out the yard office and towers, they even ripped out the bank as well! Leaving no trace, besides a concrete foundation! What’s highlighted in yellow was the extent of what was ripped up.Friends research team
Matt Chase shared
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Speeder track proposal,..
Let’s go back to an earlier time-
i’ve been emailed this question a lot, and even have been sent photos, of the original yard and why do things look so different today.
that is a great question?
We’ve been researching that one for a little while now, we’ve recently found the speeder tunnels, so we’re gonna do this in two parts,.
Part 1. The History of the Car ride and speeder track and the Friend’s speeder proposal.
Part 2. We’ve discovered the tunnel, On the ground cutting project to Cut A tunnel entrance out of the woods South of the yard office ,..
Cedar Hill terminal it is located on a tract of 1,160 acres. It is now completed for present and prospective needs and is arranged facilitate expansion as traffic for the future made demand.
This terminal is provided with both A east and westbound hump for gravity switching, makes possible for rapid classification of cars for each way promptly as they arrive. Electric pueumatic switches replace the ground switchman.
Gasoline speeder cars operate on special tracks handle the car riders on the return from the classification track to the hump.
The facts of interest concerning operation of cedar Hill yard and transfer,
New Haven railroad
September 21,1921
By UConn Library collection
Before car retarder operator,
The yard was previously operated with car rides and speeder cars to return riders to the hump. Instead of that, the car retarder operators, much more efficiently and safely then is possible with car riders and the two speeder car tracks are now used as classification yard tracks. Regardless of their efforts operating with car riders it was decided to install retarders in a letter part of 1929 to effect economies and provide greater safety to operation.
The following records of operation with the car riders, 24 hour total West Hump :
May 22, 1926: 2511 cars ( with car riders).
Both humps in 24 hour total for both:
May 22, 1926: 4092 cars (with car riders)
From memories of the New Haven Vol: 3
By Ronald Hall & Robert Wuchert, Jr
So now we know where the speeder track was on the west hump, let’s take a look at the actual speeders that they actually used in Cedar Hill yard,
The Cedar Hill yard speeders Were manufactured by The Kalamazoo railway supply Company, of Kalamazoo Michigan.
No. 25 Motor car,
This car is one of the most powerful cars for it purpose yet produced. It is capable of continuous operation at work for which the so-called section cars have been found unsuited.
It has in the standard body, seats capable of 12 men with the hump body, which has footboards, 12 more people could be accommodated To make a total of 24.
There are large number of body style which can be used with standard power unit and transmissions, permitting section cars, semi freight carrying cars for terminal use, cars for hump yard Service.
Cedar hill yard was built for speeders, The Speeder have there on separate right of way, that connected to a tunnel system the went underneath both humps.
Friend’s would like to Bring the speeders back to Cedar Hill yard as part of our operational tour of the The historic corridor from Parking lot to Quinnipiac river.
The Friend’s would like to operate identical car on the Hump, This car’s carry a large capacity.
by using the larger cars it will bring a higher form of revenue to the yard, four things like General maintenance and upkeep!
Friends research team
Matt Chase shared
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Excellent post!
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