The Railway System

The railway system was an important part of the iron and steel industry and the operation of the Blocton coke ovens. The ovens were constructed with rails on top for the charging car, often called a larry. There were rails between each row of ovens for the transportation of the finished coke. It is likely they were constructed in the manner later described by the noted mining engineer John Fulton in 1895: “The larry track should be made with T rails, weighing 70 to 80 pounds per lineal yard, to be laid on iron crossties or iron [unreadable] with necessary chair fastenings. When a double row of coke ovens is constructed, the larry track should be placed midway between the [unreadable] port of the ovens. In this case the larry should have discharging [unreadable] on each side.”, Many of the huge end-buttress stones were removed from this north end of the coke ovens to reconstruct an old iron furnace at Tannehill Ironworks Historical State Park in the 1980s. This left the brick pillars exposed that were used to support the weight of the railroad on top of the ovens. The smaller larry cars that ran on this track were used to dump coal into the hole on top of the ovens.