The Tipple

The Tipple. New River Gorge National River. The large, metal structure in front of you was Nuttallburg's tipple, where coal was sorted, stored, loaded into rail cars, or transferred to the site's coke ovens. The name tipple comes from the practice in some mines of tipping ore cars to unload them. The Fordson Coal Company, who leased the Nuttallburg Mine in the 1920s, built this tipple in 1923-24. This is the third tipple on the site., Here in New River Gorge the mining process was complicated by the fact that the coal seam was half-way up the gorge slope. Mining here meant moving coal from the headhouse at the mine entrance down the conveyor to the tipple at the gorge bottom. The tipple was the operation's centerpiece., Tipple Operation , Each mine had rail sidings from the C&O main line that went to the tipple, where coal was sorted and loaded into railroad cars. Nuttallburg's siding had three tracks that passed here beneath the tipple., 1 Conveyor: carried coal from the mine to the tipple. , 2 Marcus picking table screen: for cleaning and sorting coal. , 3 Loading boom: gently lowered coal into rail cars. , 4 Inside track: for loading slack (fine) coal. , 5 Middle track: for loading intermediate coal grades. , 6 Outside track: for loading larger lump coal. , 7 House coal hopper: for Nuttallburg's residents for cooking and heating. , 8 Silo storage: for storing coal, allowing mine to continue to operate when there were no available railroad cars. , 9 Roberts and Schaefer shaker screen: for sorting coal arriving from the silo.