The equipment for removing ashes from the boiler room basement and for storing and delivering the ashes to barges, comprises the following elements:  A system of tracks, 24 inches gauge, extending under the ash-hopper gates in the boiler-house cellar and extending to an elevated storage bunker at the water front.  The rolling stock consists of 24 steel cars of 2 tons capacity, having gable bottoms and side dumping doors.  Each car has two four-wheel pivoted trucks with springs.  Motive power is supplied by an electric storage battery locomotive.  The cars deliver the ashes to an elevating belt conveyor, which fills the ash bunker.  This will contain 1,000 tons, and is built of steel with a suspension bottom lined with concrete.  For delivering stored ashes to barges, a collecting belt extends longitudinally under the pocket, being fed by eight gates.  It delivers ashes to a loading belt conveyor, the outboard end of which is hinged so as to vary the height of delivery and to fold up inside the wharf line when not in use.

The coal handling system in question was adopted because any serious interruption of service would be of short duration, as any belt, or part of the belt mechanism, could quickly be repaired or replaced.  The system also possessed advantages with respect to the automatic even distribution of coal in the bunkers, by means of the self reversing trippers.  These derive their power from the conveying belts.  Each conveyor has a rotary cleaning brush to cleanse the belt before it reaches the driving pulley and they are all driven by induction motors.

The tower frame and boom are steel.  The tower rolls on two rails along the dock and is self-propelling.  The lift is unusually short; for the reason that the weighing apparatus is removed horizontally to one side in a separate house, instead of lying vertically below the crusher.  This arrangement reduces by 40 per cent. the lift of the bucket, which is of the clam-shell type of forty-four cubic feet capacity.  The motive power for operating the bucket is perhaps the most massive and powerful ever installed for such service.  The main hoist is directly connected to a 200 horse-power motor with a special system of control.  The trolley engine for hauling the bucket along the boom is also direct coupled to a multipolar motor.

The receiving hopper has a large throat, and a steel grizzly in it which sorts out coal small enough for the stokers and bypasses it around the crusher.  The crusher is of the two-roll type, with relieving springs, and is operated by a motor, which is also used for propelling the tower.  The coal is weighed in duplex two-ton hoppers.

Special attention has been given to providing for the comfort and safety of the operators.  The cabs have baywindow fronts, to enable the men to have an unobstructed view of the bucket at all times without peering through slots in the floor.  Walks and hand lines are provided on both sides of the boom for safe inspection.  The running ropes pass through hardwood slides, which cover the slots in the engine house roof to exclude rain and snow.