I am starting to fill out the roster on my 1940’s freelanced New England line, and recently obtained the ORER for 1938. I am struck by how few coal hoppers the NE carriers had.
Does anyone know what roadnames a typical cut of coal hoppers would have in Maine or New Hampshire in the 1940’s ? Are these going to be the D&H, LV, NYC bridging RR type names or did the N&W, VG E&L coal field RRs send their hoppers north.
Alternatively did everything come by boat, and shuttle from wharf to coal yard by local road names.
Regards
Since most of the coal came from area south of NE, I would suspect that D&H/RDG/LV/PRR/NYC would be good road names. Also, a lot of coal was carried on GS gondolas as well.
Jim
D&H was a coal originator that morphed into a bridge route. It, LV and RDG would have delivered anthracite in their own hoppers, largely for home heating, in the 1940s.
Bituminous coal would have been mostly PRR, some NYC. The Virginia coal haulers delivered to the ports along Chesapeake Bay and Lake Erie, and land customers to the west. End users would have been industries and power plants.
The few New England home road hoppers were primarily used to move aggregate, not coal.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964}
The thing about coal in New England is that much of it depended on the customer who ordered it. I asked this question a few years ago on a different forum. Turns out that the individual coal dealers in a town would make contracts with a coal company. So it would be quite possible to have on a train to a small town cars from several coal roads, such as PRR and B&O each going to a different dealer. Mostly you would have cars from one road that hosted the coal company to one dealer.
Now there was significant boat traffic but much of that got transferred to rail for final destination. The B&M had 4-bay hoppers specifically to take coal to a power plant in Bow, NH. So it really depends on what your line is like, for a short line or branch choose a few coal roads and have them supply individual dealers. If you are modeling a Class 1 railroad consider a number of coal roads, and having a fleet of your own hoppers.