Volume Two - The Era of Optimism, Investment & Development - Growth of coal exports . . .

They are direct-acting hoists designed to deal with wagons of a gross weight of 25 tons, whilst the cradle, carrying a loaded ten-ton wagon, can travel at 180 feet per minute ; wagons can be tipped at any height between 4 and 45 feet above the quay level, or 55 feet above water level when there is 32 feet of water on the sill. Ordinarily 24 feet long, the tip shutes can be extended to 34 feet, and to minimise breakage of coal, they can be adjusted easily to any height or angle; whilst they are also fitted with double wings, which facilitate the trimming and the "boxing" of the coal. Two cranes, one of 8 and another of 4 tons capacity, are fixed on each tip.

The tips are carried on 8 wheels with cast steel centres and steel tyres, and can be removed into any position along the quay wall by means of a four cylinder engine fixed at one end of the quay and a wire rope passing through brackets under the tips and over a drum on the engine. A gridiron or raised platform is fixed behind the tips, and against this the four traversers work; a full and empty road is provided for each traverser, and turn-tables on the traversers enable the wagons to be brought on and returned from the roads leading on to the cradle.

The sidings serving these tips are so arranged that coal mixing may be expeditiously performed, and as they have been constructed with a slight rising gradient to the centre and a falling gradient thence to the tips, a whole train of loaded wagons, holding from 2,000 to 2,500 tons, may be manipulated without the aid of any locomotive power.

The effectiveness of these tips in the most important matter of despatch may be judged from the fact that one vessel of 2,115 tons dead weight has arrived, loaded, and left on one tide, in the phenomenally short period of 1 hour 55 minutes, that another vessel of 4,000 tons has been loaded in 3 hours 40 minutes, and that it is of common occurrence for 2,000 tonners to be loaded and dispatched on the tide of arrival. In 1907 over a million tons, out of a total of 4 millions, was shipped at these tips alone.

Of a still more recent date are the four tips, the construction of which was commenced in 1905, and completed in 1906, by Messrs. Tannett, Walker & Company. Two of these (Nos. 8 and 13), built on the south side, are fixed, and two built on the north side are movable.