Looking at having an Appalachian coal branch line of about 50 feet long off my main line with a yard at bottom of branch in the late 1950’s in HO. Not sure yet which railroad. Don’t understand tipples vs coal prep plants. Are they always together, are they in different locations along coal branch? Do smaller tipples have no prep plants ? If they don’t, do you model a way to transport coal to a prep plant or does not all coal have to be sent to a prep plant ? Some additional understanding would be great.
Coal as it was mined is often not ready for use. It has to be crushed, washed or whatever. Different customers have different wishes, like large lumbs or powder. Sometimes prep plants were part of a (larger) mine, sometimes they were shared. Anyway coal was never transported directly from the mine to a local coal dealer. Trains are and were often used for every part of that journey.
Oh…? That seems to be the way it works out here. You load a 112 car train at the mine, and then dump the cars out at the power plant. Round and round they go, and if they stop someone will have to pay!
The mine probably preps the coal to some sort of a spec. and the power plants do process it further into a fine powder that is blown into the furnace and behaves there rather like oil, combusting quickly and completely.
We have a coal fired plant here at the Abbey, We receive about three truckloads a month or maybe more depending on the weather. The coal comes directly from the mine, but it is also processed there, we use a small to medium chunk of coal which has been wax treated for quicker combustion. As a matter of fact we do add another additive, a powder of some sort in our own power house.
We did receive a batch of coal from a train wreck. It was very bad stuff. The coal was better (more BTUs) than what be buy locally, but the amount of iron and steel in it that the salvage yard failed to remove with their magnets was awesome. We went through a lot of sheer pins that year.
The most commonly used model coal mine, Walthers’ Edna (aka New River) mine, includes the prep plant as part of the tipple - that’s why the structure to the side of the track, including the two slope-bottom bins. Coal went into the hopper cars, waste went into those side bins.
On the Clinchfield, a number of small mines on branch lines fed raw mine-run coal to a single prep plant located at a major mainline yard. One of the problems was waste disposal - there weren’t any practical places to dump the stuff and it makes lousy fill.
Quick way to spot a loading point for raw coal - either there will be an unadorned bin above the tracks or the conveyor/skip from the underground workings empties directly into a hopper car. Truck dumps also usually load raw coal.
Interestingly, every coal mine I minefanned' in Japan in the late 1950s loaded cleaned, sized coal - even the Three couples and a dirty dog,’ mini-mine. All featured mountainous waste piles served by skip cars. At the mini-mine, the size-sorter was out in the weather - which will be a challenge when I model it.
Tony Koester did a series on building a coal branch to his Allegheny Midland. Coal Fork branch or something like that. Should be searchable in MR.
Lion, coal handling in the 50s was different from today. Few unit trains and a lot more car loads. As one example on the Clinchfield there were multiple truck dumps that loaded cars with raw coal for transport to a larger processing plant. They actually were hauling coal TO the mine. The Clinchfield project layout in the 70s included a couple of those smaller loaders.
For modeling a coal branch on a model railroad, I wouldn’t be too concerned with getting everything just right unless you are going to make a museum or teaching aid out of it. The majority of your visitors won’t know anyway.
I have a coal branch that has two mines (one New River Mine, and one that will be kit-bashed from another NRM kit) and a truck dump. (A work in progress) I have a three track marshaling yard on the branch near the mines where loaded hoppers are gathered by a local to be put in a train that makes it’s way down to the main layout and taken to the main classification yard. Empties are brought back to the marshaling yard and a local delivers them to the mines that need them.
Thanks to all and to gandydancer19 when you said, don’t worry about getting everything just right unless a teaching aid. Its not so will probably get the walthers combo kit for the main one on branch and couple smaller mine kits to fill in along branch.
As to your structures for coal handling you might consider the series Tony Koester wrote regarding his coal branch for the allegany midland. In one of the articles he described in some detail his mine tipple kit bashes which might be helpful. He also has a book published dealing with his layout. If by chance you purchase the dvd set of all the back issues you will likely find a huge number of articles on the subject over the years.
I have not purchased the sets yet but plan on buying both the trains and model railroader sets as they will likely contain all the information I will ever need on the 2 decades I am most interested in, 1950 through 1970.