Well, lets see. I’ve got 2 tons of it on hand for my 7.5 in gauge 4in scale live steam locomotive. I haven’t run in a while. Seems the B & B gang had to dig up the main to get power to the new depot,[ full size]. My Grandparents heated there house with it, and I can remember watching it being delivered many times.
My parents house was heated by a coal furnace. I shoveled tons of coal and ashes.
We would play in the coal pile and slide down the coal chute to the coal cellar. Needless to say our mother wasn’t to happy about that.
No choices for me.15 years ago my job was using a payloader to move coal at a powerplant.I love the smell of coal burning but it wasn’t fun getting a clinker out of a boiler’s cinder hopper.
I’ve held it, used it, burned it, hauled it. I’ve run too many coal trains to count, so not particularly fond of it.
my son has a lot of pieces of coal he picks up at various historical-railroad sites and
until the late 70’s My parents house was heated with coal and my mother cooked on it,
I shoveled it for them and the cat used it when it was wet or cold outside . . . . . . .
I remember coal, but I prefer a gas-stove, central heating and cat-grit
and the block of coal in my engine display
all i have is a clinker
Grew up in a town where the local RR station burned coal in a pot-bellied stove. I was fortunate enough to see 6 -8 steamers run through in a day. Nothing like the smell of coal smoke. Last steamer ran through my town in 1963. A few years ago I found some along the rail line, in the ballast. Took it home, put it in the fireplace, and had myself a “nostalgia party”.
I too grew up in coal country - Scranton and Carbondale. In fact I was living in Carbondale when (in about 1950) a whole block sank 15 feel as a result of shoring giving way beneath it. My job as a kid was to fill the automatic stokers (we had two of them). What luxury. Remember those times with fondness.
The railroad I model is the noe defunct O&W which used to haul coal as a major revenue source.
My grand mother burned it in her coal furnace in the basement up until sometime in the 1960’s when the land lord had the burner switched over to natural gas.
I wanted to play in the coal room “climb the mountain”, split it to try and find fossils, etc. back then when I was just a wee model railroader, but grandma wouldn’t allow it as she said I would be a mess from all the coal dust. I used to watch the coal man run his wooden chute into the coal room window in the basement, and deliver a load.
I have seen and held coal but have never burned it.
I have seen many coal trains while railfanning the Altoona/Cresson PA area.
My first train ride when I was a kid was on a train powered by Strasburg Railroad 2-10-0 #90.
I have a great amount of respect for the hard working people who mine and have mined coal. Hard and dangerous work. When you see a coal train, or run a model of one, or use electricity from a coal fired power plant, think about those miners, past and present.
US Air Force had me stationed in England for 3 years - '72 thru '75. The house I lived in was coal fired heating. Like other posts above, I spent many a cold morning freezing outside diging in the coal bin. Makes me appreciate the gas fired central air system I have here in AZ.
I must be gettin’ on in the grey-hair department. Back in the late '50’s I oiled freights then was an apprentice car whacker and though SP was all oil burners and diesels we used coal in the pot belly stoves in the crew shacks ( old wooden passenger cars on the ground-no trucks) and the freight crews used same in the crummies. 'used to light ‘em off with a fusee ,or as now known, a flare. Got the heat goin’ in a hurry! Now this last summer I happened to get to Orbisonia, PA and rode the East Broad Top. Great experience and I brought home some of it’s “solid fuel” as a keepsake. You never forget the smell of coal smoke on a crisp morning. johncolley tholcapn
I’ve held it, shoveled it, and took out the ashes…My parents home (mine) was coal heated till the late 50"s… Then oil and gas started to be available, boy what a change…
I remember the coal man bringing bags of coal to dump in the coal chute, thats the closet that held the coal, which you then shoveled in to the furnace…
Life was a lot harder in those days…but it made me thankful for all we have today!
I’ve seen the coal over the tops of the hoppers in a number of coal drags. They pass by only about a mile from the house. I’ve also seen the pile that the IU power plant used to keep on hand next to the boiler building. And I picked up a lump from off of the tracks for my own use. I plan on getting enough to fill my own coal drag on the IMRR.
Joe
No big deal if you are older.
In my lifetime, we burned coal in the fireplace in England, early 40’s to early 50’s. It was rationed during the war, and had to be swapped for other goods, to get ‘extra’.
My Dad used to bring home a bag of coal on the train, that he had swapped for stuff from his restaurant.
When we came to Toronto ,Canada in 1952, the fireplace needed coal. Buying in cords of cut hardwood was virtually unknown in the cities back then.
Coal was dirty and inefficient for what we did with it.
Hard to miss it if you come from back then.
regards
Mike[:)]
Lots of coal in Vancouver and Greater Vancouver. Roberts Bank is major into coal and in North Vancouver where I live, thousands and thousands of tons of it. My worst memory of it was when as a kid I saw a pile of burnt coal sitting by the garbage and for some stupid reason decided to put my foot in it. Only then did I discover, the center of the pile was still red hot.
Anything that requires a lot of work to run or maintain, I generally don’t have warm memories of, I’m lazy. I’m convinced it was some lazy guy who invented the refrigerator because he was tired of hauling ice, maybe the same guy invented the oil burning furnace and the electric stove. God bless lazy one’s everywhere, with out them the world would be a harder place to live.
I have a lump of coal that I keep in a hole by the RR tracks at my friends house. It must be from a steamer (I’ve yet to see a hopper fully loaded). That track is pretty old, it still has the “railjoiners”, not the welded rail. So when a train goes by you can here the good ole “clickity clack”.
None of the choices really fit me, but reading the responses sure brought back a lot of childhood memories! We had a coal furnace in our basement in the late-40’s and 50’s before it was changed to an oil furnace and finally to natural gas. I remember that huge monster sitting in the middle of the basement floor with its big round pipes going up to the living areas. My father used to have to go down every evening and bank the fire so it wouldn’t go out during the night and freeze us. We used to have a coal bin in a corner of the basement and I can remember getting in there and getting covered in black coal dust and getting royal heck from my mother. I can still recall the terrible racket as the coal poured down the chute from the delivery truck into the bin. Ah, the memories!
… Bob
I’ve got a piece in my train room which fell off a tender on the Mt. Washington cog railway. I’ve burned it for heat in my SoCal fireplace, run my blacksmith froge with it (even have several hundred pounds on hand), seen it on the trains on the UP main accross the street from my old house, and now have a trainroom in a California basement which still has its coal chute.
Used to burn coal at home in England in the 40s and 50s. Then smokeless fuel came in. Used that, and coke too. Last coal opperation I saw was in Alberta, an open pit mine for Trans Alta Power.
Where I am now on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, there is coal laying around in small bits in the yard. I think a previous owner used it for heating. Its handy for the coal loads in my N hoppers, and also for doing up packages for “first footing” in the neighbourhood on New Years Day.