RMC has been running a series on various businesses served by rail. Last year, they ran a feature on lumber yards and one of the points they made was that lumber yards at one time sold coal for home heating. I am about to build a fairly large lumber yard on my layout and was wondering if having a coal bin is a feature I should add. I am modeling the mid 1950s along the New York/New Jersey border and would like to know if coal was still a commonly used home heating fuel in that time and place or had it been replaced by other fuels by that time. My own boyhood home from the 1950s was heated by natural gas but I’m fairly certain it had been converted from a coal burning furnace because there was a section of the basement where there were still clumps of coal and a window in that area that tilted inward, presumably to act as a coal shoot. We had a neighbor who had a garage that still had a pile of old coal stored in it. This tells me the houses in my area had at one time been coal burners but converted to natural gas.
I have a price card from the mid-1950s from a local (Queens NY) fuel dealer, with prices of coal listed, so clearly residental coal delivery was still supported then.
A lot of residences converted to oil heat first from coal, I think because there wasn’t that much Natural Gas pipeline capacity at the time. Not sure when coal was phased out in NYC (some public school boilers used coal until the 1980s), but probably was almost gone when they banned private apartment building incinerators (late 1960s? early 1970s).
I grew up near Holyoke MA which had the Whiting Coal Company at the end of a railroad line. Looks like one for coaling locos but was used to store and distribute coal to businesses and apartment blocks in the city and surrounding area.
Might have been used to coal the steamers that did switching in the city as there were many companies serviced by railroad. By the time I was aware of the company, coal was in a decline.
http://www.holyokemass.com/transcript/advert/ad19.html
Horse drawn coal wagon. I do remember dump trucks for hauling coal.
http://creatingholyoke.org/archive/files/imgn94_393_96b4476292.jpg
http://www.whitingenergy.com/about.html
Another coal company photo I found.
http://dlib.cwmars.org/cdm4/item_viewer.php?CISOROOT=/hudson&CISOPTR=16
Related industry.
A large amount of coal was delivered by railroad to Northampton and Springfield MA for making what was called artificial gas by people for heating and lighting in those cities. Many cities in the USA heated coal to make coal ga
I don’t know about the USA - but I’m interested - but in Europe town gas plants using (suitable) coal sold several bi-products. These included coke for domestic and industrial use and creosote for wood preserving. I think that they produced some acids as well.
I would expect that the choice of coal fired, coke or gas (also oil) would depend on what (if any) coal was predominantly available in an area.
I recently saw a programme about the building of our (electric) National Grid. Again I don’t know what happebned in the USA except for the building of the Hoover Dam but the use of/need for gas for lighting (and cooking) probably paid a large part. …as would the development of the technology to safely distribute fuel. the good thing about coal is that it doesn’t leak and go “BANG”… at least not when it is in domestic use lumps… or grains… industriial blown powder can be a bit different…
[8D]
I remember my folks burned wood and coal in their home furnace until the early 60’s in Mpls,Minn.
By the mid-1950s coal (especially anthracite for home heating) was in serious decline but had not - quite - hit bottom. My home (apartment) in NY was converted from coal to oil about 1950, and the local gas supply changed from ‘water gas’ to natural gas in the same time period.
When more active, the local lumber yard/coal dealer would probably have had a dedicated coal delivery track, possibly raised on a short trestle so the coal could be dumped through it. Coal was loaded on special dump trucks with hydraulic scissor lifts and a really small door in the bottom center of the top-hinged tailgate. The trucks carried sections of coal chute on hooks along the bottom of the dump bed. Coal got from the pile on the ground with the help of a portable conveyor and a strong back with a shovel.
I remember that Blue Coal had a large anthracite bunker, almost like a railroad coaling station, at the head of navigation of the Bronx River near Westchester Square. Product was delivered by barge from New Jersey. That bunker is now long gone.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Here in the Mid Atlantic, coal was still available as a home heating fuel when I was a child in the 60’s. Our local fuel oil distributor was located right on the Baltimore & Annapolis RR and still had a working coal trestle until 1968?, 1969?.
Sheldon
I grew up in a South Carolina cotton mill town during the 60s and coal was still a fairly common fuel then. Our house had propane, but many of my relatives and friends had coal. As best I can recall there were three coal suppliers in the county. One at the lumberyard, one at the cotton gin, and one independent. The lumberyard and gin used moveable conveyers to unload hoppers and the indepedent had a one hopper trestle that a dump truck could back under.
Probably the biggest memories I have from childhood are Christmas Eve at my aunt’s house. The whole extended family, aunts, uncles, and about a zillion kids crammed into her living room heated by a coal stove. You could only last about 10 minutes before the heat from that thing drove you back outside to the porch swing. Sometimes I miss the smell of coal smoke over the neighborhood.
OK, I have the coal price card in front of me now:
It is from Diana Coal & Oil Co, formerly on Atlantic Ave in Brooklyn (also, Jamaica Queens).
Their coal silos were a landmark on Atlantic Avenue for decades - a quick check of Bing shows the silos are no more, the address (3298 Atlantic Ave) being a big empty field roughly where Conduit intersects Atlantic. It’s also near the end of the Gloriously named ‘Force Tube Avenue’). The El is not far away, but I don’t think there were any LIRR branches in that immediate area (well, except for the LIRR Atlantic Avenue line tunneling under Atlantic Avenue at that point…but other than that minor exception, no LIRR branches[xx(] )
Anyway, Coal Prices:
Stove $20.75/ton
Nut $20.75/ton
Pea $16.95/ton
Buck & Rice prices on request, while “$2 per ton delivers your order on budget” [? I dunno?]
Exact Year, that’s a bit tougher - there is no ZIP code (introduced 1963) but there are Character Exchange telephone numbers (Brooklyn TA7-7534 & Jamaica OL7-5010) - (ANC: All-Number-Calling introduced 1962). The card says established over 25 years, but apparently Diana Coal was incorporated 1955 - unlikely this card is from 1970, so probably Diana Coal was around many years before incorporation.
And finally, the future is clearly visible on this card - Oil Burners - 'Nothing to pay until Next November" - $279.00 fully installed. And Number 2 Fuel oil as 12cents per gallon.
Now, as for the coal gas plants mentioned above, I actually have The Model Railroader’s Guide to Industries along the Tracks #4 (it’s not a bad series, this “Industries along the tracks”). Chapter 1, you guessed it, Coal Gas Plants|
Inputs:
Coal → via Rail (usually)
Outputs:
well, coal gas → via Pipeline
Coke → via Rail (usually)
Coal T
Coal would still be common as a heating source in the fifties, especially in older areas. Newer developments like suburbs would be almost exclusively gas or electric. Coal was delivered by truck, usually dumped from the truck down a chute into the basement.
Coal dealers that rec’d a lot of coal would have a coaling trestle where a couple of hopper cars of coal could dump their loads. Smaller coal dealers (who also often sold different types of crushed stone and gravel) often preferred to get coal in a drop-bottom gondola. The gondola doors opened in such a way that the coal fell out to the sides of the track, making it easier to remove than dumping between the tracks (when there was no trestle).
Actually, oil was the fuel of 1st choice except for areas that had natural gas. Even in many areas of big cites like Baltimore, Phily or New York, fuel oil was the choice of most builders in the post WWII building boom and it was the fuel of choice for converting from coal if natual gas was not available.
Electric baseboard heat was promoted some in the 60’s when electric rates were low, and heat pumps didn’t really appear until the 80’s.
But oil and gas remain the most cost effective, most comfortable, and most efficient (and most environmentally friendly with modern equipment) of all the choices.
Sheldon
When I was a kid in the 1950’s and 60’s growing up just north of Baltimore there was a company that sold coal, fuels, building supplies of all sorts and hardware at the same location. They had a dedicated coal trestle about 3-4 55ton hoppers long that also extended the length of a 50’ boxcar that was used for general hardware and dry building supplies like plaster, cement, etc. The first part of that siding was used to unload tanks by gravity. They had another siding on the other side of their lot that was used for lumber and larger items and equipment like tractors. The trestle and buildings were still there in the early 80’s even though they didn’t unload any coal after about 1957 or so. It was a perfect model railroad operation using almost every kind of car!
Roger Huber
In suburb of Cincinnati, Reading, Ohio, we still had a coal furnace till about 1967. I was a junior in high school and the last kid living at home when we switched to a gas furnace with an air conditioning unit. Not because of a lack of getting coal delivered but for a lack of finding parts at the junk yard to repair the cast iron grates in the old furnace. There were still several homes in the older areas of town that still heatewd with coal. Anyway there where two places locally to get coal and both places had coal trestles. One was primarily a feed store that sold feed, seed, bricks, coal, etc., the other was a lumber yard that also sold coal. Besides delivering coal the lumber yard had a coin operated machine along the side of the main road that you could buy a burlap bag full of coal I think in two different sizes. They apparently loaded hoppers behind the wall of the machine since it was not located by the trestle. You brought your own bag, opened it up below the chute, put in the coin money and out came a specific measured amount of coal. We only used this when we ran out of coal while waiting for a delivery. Two to three bags would last a couple of days. The lumber yard stopped selling coal around 1970. The feed store sold coal till sometime in the late seventies. The feed store trestle was damaged by a fire sometime in the eighties and ultimately torn down. The various concrete bins under the trestle was then used to keep bulk mulch and other landscaping stuff separated. Sorry to get so memory lane worded but depending on what era one would model, various stages of a coal trestle can be modeled from an active coaling facilty to the remains of what once was with a different usage. The same can be said for concrete coaling towers, particularly main line ones, on post steam layouts. A lot are still standing since it is expensive and troublesome to tear them down. Understandable since everythin
My mother worked for a coal supplier in Toledo and they were one of the last companies that delivered coal in the city and they were in that business until the mid 1960’s. They also were in the asphalt paving business and sold grills and charcol also. My mother’s company was one of six coal companies serviced by the Toledo Terminal RR in 1933.
My grandmother’s house was heated by coal until they converted the furnace to gas in 1959. I remember helping shovel coal and stoke the fire when I was a kid. In addition we used the ash on the sidewalks instead of salt as is done now.
Rick
Since the OP wants to model a mid '50’s lumber yard that happens to also have coal service, it might be fun to model the lumber portion of the business as well maintained and “modern”, with the coal portion older and more rundown, reflecting the changing times.
My grandparents who resided in eastern Idaho were still using coal for heating and cooking until they sold the farm and moved into the village in the mid-60s; my grandmother hated her (damned) electric stove until the day she died.
Other than that my only contact with coal as a major heating source was in Freeburg, Illinois where I lived in 1949-50; our apartment building was heated by a coal furnace in the basement. I remember a dump truck dumping a couple of tons of coal into the basement at least every couple of weeks. I remember there was some kind of a discussion going on about something called Natural Gas but I was a ten year old and who-in-the-heck knew what this Natural Gas was?
Freeburg, Illinois is, of course, far removed from the New York/New Jersey border but I do know that there was still a considerable use of coal nationwide into the '50s and maybe even into the '60s.
I recall 3-4 schools in Columbus,Ohio was still using coal in 63.By '64 the remaining coal boilers have been replaced…
Today many folk that lives in the country uses wood stoves to heat their homes.
Brookville Ohio (where I live) was extensively heated by coal. The lumber yard on the tracks (some bldgs now converted to apartments!) included a coal yard, with a siding that ran over bins, for various grades. There is also an old ash pit in the immediate area. Could send a sketch and picture of the remains, if you’d like… Steve
Two of the Toledo, OH coal companies that were served by the Toledo Terminal RR are still in business today. Of course, they no longer deal in coal though. One, Black Diamond, is now a nursery/garden center/lawn care business, but they are still in the same location as when they were a coal dealer. The other company, Blue Flame, is now an appliance parts/repair business. There were litteraly dozens of coal dealers in Toledo in the late '30s and '40s. Practically every railroad that ran into Toledo served coal dealers. In other news, the TTRR trackage was removed from the area where these two businesses are this last summer. I remember the short, little single axle dump trucks that delivered coal to my parents house in Lima, OH in the late '40s. I also remember the horse drawn milk wagons that delivered milk to our door three times a week in Lima. Good lord, am I that old?!