Coal operations

[NW Modeling List]

How you handle coal can be very era specific.

Not my area of greatest expertise but I can't help but weigh in here.

The biggest assumption is that coal is coal.  Almost every mine has a 
slight variation in the coal it produces.  For example some have a 
higher content of ash when burned some have lower or higher amounts of 
other elements like sulfur that make a difference  on where it is used.

When everyone one used coal as a home heating fuel, you wanted something 
that didn't clinker left little ash to carry out of the basement and 
didn't smell bad.  Some home heating coals were advertised as dustless 
which meant it was sprayed with oil to hold the dust on.  Dealers also 
carried coal from different producers with brand names just like we have 
for gasoline.  To prove you were getting the brand you paid for little 
tags were sprinkled into the coal with the brand name on them.  Coal 
also came in different sizes from lump (greater than eight inches) going 
down in sizes to egg and pea etc.  If you had a home stoker most weren't 
powerful enough to crush coal so you had to buy the right size coal.  If 
a tipple had more than one track under it, it was to load different 
sizes of coal.  Depending on how the sorting screens were arranged from 
left to right you would see a track full of cars with lump coal, a 
medium size then a smaller size (or vice versa).  Because coal dealers 
weren't all the same size they didn't all want the same size of car.  
Modelers don't load enough coal in gondolas.  If a dealer only wanted 25 
tons they might load a low side G-1 gondola instead of a 55 ton hopper.  
The coal car directories the railroad published always  included 
gondolas and hoppers as "coal cars".

The coal merchandising department didn't go away when people quit using 
coal at home.  Those thousand or so varieties of coal would be custom 
blended for coking or export.  When we toured Lamberts Point the first 
time they described this to us.  The picker crew in the yard would have 
to put in coal car A car B etc. up to eight different varieties (IIRC).  
They also said there were a few times when from the thousand or so cars 
to pick from they didn't have the right coal for a blend.  To make the 
ship sailing time a car or two or four from one specific mine would be 
rushed on the back of a merchandise train to Norfolk.  Big coking 
operations like South Boston would need the same kind of blending.

I didn't hear anybody mention timbers.  After you cut all of the trees 
down around the mine your had to bring in timbers some nearly the size 
of railroad ties for bracing and shoring.

Nor did I hear anybody mention weighing.  Most mines didn't have their 
own scales but the mines wanted the weight as soon as possible so they 
could make the most money (before the railroad rocked it off the top or 
it leaked out through a hole or a leaky door.

Everybody thinks about what we have now. Power plants that are almost 
designed to burn a specific coal.  So the Powder River dirt gets shipped 
150 cars at a time from one mine to one power plant.

Maybe this will bump some long dormant gray cells loose and some of the 
real old times can throw in some more complications.

Stoney

Rick Stone

NWHS #0001