Getting coal from ships to a railroad can be quite an operation. In December of 1942 Jack Delano visited the operations of the Milwaukee Western Fuel Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The coal comes in on huge lake freighter ships, where it is unloaded and stockpiled. The photograph below is an overview of a pair of large bridge cranes, one on either side of the ship channel at the Seventeenth Street dock. The traveling bucket scoops the coal from the ship holds, then dumps it into piles.

And below is a close-up of the loading end of the machine. Mr. Delano has recorded this view from the opposite side of the bridge. The bucket drops coal into the hopper at the top, it is sized over screens, the proper size coal goes down the chute on the left into the car, and the rest goes down the chute on the right back onto the coal pile.