Coal operations

[NW Modeling List]

Rick,

All good points, especially weighing the coal.

An interesting book on the subject of coal operations, albeit on another
railroad, is *The Clinchfield Railroad in the Coalfields,* by Robert A.
Helm, published by TLC.

Jim Brewer

On Wed, Oct 31, 2018 at 10:54 AM NW Modeling List <nw-modeling-list at nwhs.org>
wrote:

> 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
>
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