English: Title: An old coaling tower that once served Chesapeake & Ohio steam locomotives moving through Bluefield, West Virginia

Physical description: 1 photograph : digital, tiff file, color.

Notes: Purchase; Carol M. Highsmith Photography, Inc.; 2015; (DLC/PP-2015:055).; Credit line: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive, Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.; Forms part of: West Virginia Collection within the Carol M. Highsmith Archive.; Title, date and keywords based on information provided by the photographer.; A coaling tower or coal stage is a facility used to load coal into railway steam trains. The towers used gravity to slide coal down a chute into the waiting trains' coal storage area in "tender" cars immediately behind the locomotives. The bulk coal was often loaded INTO the tower from wagons positioned on hillsides or ramps above them. With railroads' switch from steam to diesel locomotives, the need for coaling towers ended, but many such as the one in Hinton remain in place due to the high cost of demolition of these massive structures.