By Frank Passic
This year there was some serious trimming of foliage and small trees on the west side of N. Eaton St. across from Albion’s Michigan Central Railroad depot in the vicinity of an old-style fire hydrant. That area was so overgrown that pedestrians on the sidewalk had to walk around or “duck” when they came to this point. When the trimming was completed, it revealed an unusual object that goes back a hundred years to Albion’s “coal furnace” days before natural gas lines were installed.
The object is an end-of-track buffer, placed there at the “end of the line” to stop any trains that might keep rolling if the brakes were not properly set. It consists of the rails being bent upwards and bent to a point where they are joined together and fastened with a heavy piece of iron. This buffer sticks out like a sore thumb, and the original rails leading up to it are still there, hidden by underbrush and small trees. Perhaps you have driven by it and have wondered what it is.
This was once part of the operations of the McDougal & Young coal yard which once existed adjacent to it south of the track. That area is now part of a river walking path “park.” Today you can easily view large divided concrete bins below. Coal cars would run on this rail line above and dump coal into the bins via chutes that were placed along the way.
The coal office building (long demolished) was located just south of this buffer at 221 N. Eaton St. The storage garage that still sits there today at 219 N. Eaton St. south of the former office location is what remains from the subsequent transition to the soft water business operated by Ralph Young, and later Culligan’s owned by Jack Fox. The transition to natural gas in Albion during the 1950s meant the end of coal furnaces during the 1960s, and thus the coal era in Albion was ended. With that, the tracks were abandoned “as is,” and have sat there covered up all these years.
From our Historical Notebook we feature a present-day photograph of the buffer, and another photograph of one of the coal chutes where the coal would slide down into the storage bins below. Our third photograph shows the remains of the coal bins below. How many of our readers remember coal furnaces in their homes?
