Fairport Harbor, OH: B&O Coal Loader, USS Ore Unloading and Salt Loading

(Satellite, it was on the southern shore of the northern slip)

Between iron ore coming in and coal going out, there were a lot of rail/water transfer facilities along the south shore of Lake Erie.

Now this port ships salt. (An article with 12 salt mining photos. An article with 9 photos (pay count). Morton Salt ships about a million tons a year, half of which uses lake shipping. [USACE])

Bob Weston posted
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad’s Fairport, Ohio coal loader. This loader was closed in 1965 when the B&O made an arrangement with the Bessemer and Lake Erie Railroad to move coal through their Conneaut, Ohio, facilities. Julian W Barnard photo 2 July 1966. R J Weston collection.
Dale Pohto Hard to believe that there were kids who were brave enough to jump into the slip from atop this loader!
B Tupper Upham I spy a Pringle barge stack...
Dale Pohto And the aft half of a G-tug in the foreground under it...
Fred Bultman Fairport was winter maintenance facility for Columbia, who operated the Pringle barges.
Dale Pohto I'm very familiar with the Fairport Machine Shop... Most (but not all) of Oglebay Norton's crane ship conversions were also performed there. Aside from the slips, no trace of any of these facilities remain.

Bob Weston posted

Another view of the B&O RR coal dumper at Fairport Harbor, Ohio, on 2 July 1966. The dumper was no longer being used but a shipping company was using the dock. Julian W Barnard photo. R J Weston collection.

Fred Bultman Was this where Columbia operated their winter repair facility?

Bob WestonAuthor yes

Dale Pohto Fred Bultman The Fairport Machine Shop (on the left) was where most (but not all) of Columbia's crane ships were converted. Other than the slips, no trace remains of any of these facilities.

Jon S. Chapin and I recall 2 dock/slips, were there 2 dumpers, once?

Dale Pohto Jon S. Chapin No, two slips but only one loader. The non-coal slip was for boats undergoing work by the machine shop. That slip has since been allowed to slowly fill in so as to be almost unrecognizable now.

Photos of a self-unloading Pringle barge being loaded: 1 and 2. These photos may have been taken in Conneaut, which had a similar loader. (Pringle Barge seems to be the company owning the barges, not a design style.)

1953 Mentor Quadrangle @ 1:24,000

USACE 1960 Report

Historical aerials, especially 1970, show that the loader was on the south side of the northern slip. It was gone by 1982.

Both Fairport and Conneaut were smaller players in terms of tonnage shipped.

1898 Mine Inspector Report @ 153%, p21

In the following text and photos, if just a page number is specified as a reference, it is the PDF page number in 1898 Mine Inspector Report.

Fairport started shipping in 1883 and Conneaut started in 1893. [p23]

Dennis DeBruler commented on Bob's post
The first unloading machine was installed here in 1895. It was the second End Dump machine built. (The first one was installed by NYC/LSMS in Ashtabula.) The predecessor of the B&O route here was evidently the Pittsburgh and Western Railway because they modified 2000 of their cars so that an end side could be raised as a gate. This machine could unload 15 cars a day with a four man crew. [pp32,38]

Reprints

The need for this B&O bridge is obvious.

Satellite

I was wondering what justified the cost of this bridge.

Satellite

HAER LC-D43-1930 [P&P], cropped
Ohio, Fairport ore docks
ackson, William Henry, 1843-1942, photographer
Detroit Publishing Co., publisher
1892, Commissioned by Pittsburgh & Western Railroad

Dale Pohto posted
Despite the incorrect notation (probably the loading port for this ship), this rare photo (looking NE) is of the U.S. Steel-owned str. Samuel F.B. Morse unloading under the Brown Electric Fast Plants at the U.S. Steel-owned Pennsylvania & Lake Erie ore dock on the east side of the river at Fairport. The homestead of my grandparents (where I spent much of my youth) can be seen to the right of the photo.