An elevated railway facility built along a waterway where bottom-dumping coal cars could discharge their loads directly into the holds of ships or barges. While largely an older term and more common in British practice, similar gravity-fed coal docks were vital infrastructure on early North American coal-hauling routes.
Heard on the job
The old pilings near the harbor are all that's left of the coal staithe.
Also heard as
- coal dock
- coal pier