Ok, CNW fans, here’s a question for ya… Prior to CNW accessing the Powder River Basin and the near-endless stream of black diamonds, where did the coal for power plants along the CNW come from? For example, WEPCO Oak Creek, WEPCO Lakeside (I think that was the name, and when they actually got coal), Sheboygan Edgewater, probably even the Waukegan power plant. (WEPCO Pleasant Prairie is too new, came on line post-PRB. Does/did WEPCO Port Washington burn coal?)
Mark, some of it still was delivered to us by UP, in their own hoppers (and with their SD24s and SD24Bs in the power consist). That would go to Oak Creek.
A lot of coal came from Illinois–some of it from the Elm mine on the former M&StL west of Peoria. Still other coal for Sheboygan would come in big cuts of cars from the eastern railroads, predominately PC. I don’t know if that went to the WP&L plant or elsewhere.
Port Washington, as far as I know, never received coal by train. Possibly by ship?
Southern Iowa used to have several operational coal mines as well.
Oak Creek coal came to us from the CSX. We used to pick it up at Proviso, usually with CSX power on it for the trip (with a CNW unit in the lead for ATS requirements.
The other coal trains always had CNW power, and I never bothered to find out where they came from (I just ran 'em). The only reason I remember the Oak Creek was due to the icky power that the CSX used to give us.
Jim, I remember those trains from CSX, too–that was a little later than when I was talking about. They often had some of the original WEPX gons (long gone now), and, fairly often, a P&LE waycar!
The original WEPX gons were here by the time I hired out, and usually came in from the west. I wouldn’t be surprised if they got their coal from somewhere in Illinois at one time, too, as I recall seeing some wrecked WEPX gons on a trip to South Pekin in '71.
I can remember back when a “hopper train” was in fact a hopper train–the God-awfullest mix of anything 70 tons and over bearing CNW or MSTL reporting marks!
But I also remember pulling a train of UP hoppers out of Oak Creek–the non-rotary type. We had to go in there and make all of the hoses!
In the 80’s and earlier, Old Ben Coal Company shipped a couple of trains a week from Old Ben Mine 21 on the Q at Sesser, Illinois to Oak Creek. Don’t remember the number offhand, but Mine 21 had a lower sulphur content than typical for that area. Consolidated Coal’s Rend Lake Mine worked the same seam a little to the northeast of OB 21 and also had a relatively low sulphur content on their reserves. Old Ben exhausted their reserves and closed their 4 mines in the area before 2000, but Consol’s operation didn’t close until '01 or '02. Not sure where Consol shipped, but the coal was suitable for coking.
Where is the best place to find photographic records of these Chicago & North Western coal trains?
Andrew Falconer
I think a lot of it came from southern Illinois.
Bert