781 Comments for Old Saint Nicholas Coal Breaker

The spots were used to light up the site at night. Being the complex is so massive it was necessary to make sure a great deal of it was lit. Accidents in a coal breaker were relatively low and RAC wanted to keep it that way.

The original plan was to convert the breaker into a museum and actually have parts of it running. That plan has since been scrapped, no pun intended. There was a lot more to this site than meets the eye. Having looked at the original plans, this site is massive, not to mention all of the rail yards that have been torn up and company houses that have been demolished. St. Nick was the largest in the world when it opened in 1933 and is still impressive. Oh, and RAC still uses parts of the site and the surrounding area.

i envy this mans life.

...so much like tears.

Egad.

Looks like the poor behemoth has a black eye since this stormy night...

Now they are out of line 8)

wow - thats sort of a *big* öhm, bolt ^^

I lived literally 5 minutes walking distance from this breaker my whole life, and I can tell you that the hole was caused by a windy storm that knocked the shingles/panels off the building probably just that same year you took this pic. It was never there, and the morning after the storm there was a big gaping hole. Tells you how stable the building is!!

I was raised in a little patch just north of this breaker. Those rollers were covered with a wide rubber belt that carried either rock or coal to another destination ore treatment.

STL girl, I lied. i was never even here.

This reminds me...of scenes of amusement park abandonments.

"jumped out the window onto a trampoline"?? Must not have been more than 2 floors up.

The trees and brush are sneaking up and grabbing everything!

Unless there was a conveyor line for speed control, whatever went down that would be moving Very fast at the bottom.