Old Landmark of Oswego Harbor Down to Ground

For more than 50 years a landmark In Oswego harbor, the Lackawanna coal trestle passed Friday, when workmen of the bridges and buildings department of the railroad company dropped the last timbers. They will be removed with in a day or two, usable timber to be shipped to Hoboken, and the balance to be sold for firewood.

Waterfront observers Friday remarked on the great change removal of this structure made in appearances of the harbor. For years the trestle, more than 1,800 feet long, and 50 feet above the top of the terminal on which It was erected, dominated the outer harbor. It was constructed the year after the U. S. government completed the outer breakwater, which was first of timber, later to be re-constructed in concrete.

In the 50-odd years of Its utility, the company shipped through the trestle, many millions of tons of anthracite coal, and while anthracite coal will continue to be one of the commodities to be shipped through modern facilities which are to replace this old trestle, there will be others, with the bulk of the tonnage to be in bituminous coal, following the trend of the past two or three years. The trestle shut off all view from one side or the other, from the shore, of the rest of the harbor. With the trestle down, the state elevator now dominates the water front in bulk, but now a steel tower 50 feet high, with a sloping steel-work approach, in which conveyers will be operated, to replace the trestle, but this will not shut off the view as did the old structure.

Residents on the west waterfront were speculating on the change of variety m noises the new coaling plant will bring. Since It was opened, the trestle operation consisted of towing loaded cars up the incline by a cable and hook, and the sound of the hook being hurled down the metal chute was long a familiar waterfront sound when the trestle was active.

Cars will be pushed up a lower incline to a level eight feet above the terminal dock, under the new plans, and their contents dumped into a hopper from which conveyors will take the contents to the top of a tower whence vessels will be laded through a telescopic electrically operated and fully enclosed chute. There will be less noise, less dust, more efficiency and less breakage in the new plan, but old time residents viewed the passing of the trestle in the new plant Friday as the departure of an old friend.