Originally Posted by
Waterways
... From Oritelad's web site. The inside of the side tunnel does look rather black - maybe from coke storage. I think coke would have been used on any tunnel loco as it gives off less smoke than coal.
Yes that photo looks blackened and exactly like what you would build as a coke bunker. To the side of, rather than directly beneath, the water tower is where you could water and shovel fuel into a loco both at the same time and the sidings layout fits.
So we can imagine a gang or perhaps four men in Victorian times, tending to an 0-4-0 loco, hitching and unhitching waggons to the rope haulage. And from the newspaper report they improvised a bit on moving wagons, especially in the sidings. We might speculate that the lethal pusher-prop was used to move the three waggons together to the bunker instead of one at a time over many hours using the loco each time.
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Would the fatal coke be coming from Edge Hill or from the docks?
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