This is the thread formerly titled “Coal Gondola Questions”. I decided to give it a more appropriate name, espicially since some more questions have been raised that are not necessarily associated with coal gondolas.
A few weeks ago I saw a long block of BN and ATSF 3 bay, open top hoppers sitting in a local train yard, along with two CBQ hoppers. There were a few BN coal gondolas(http://www.rrpicturearchives.net/showPicture.aspx?id=406657), such cars are very rare around here, interspersed in this block of cars. The hopper cars are frequent visitors the Big West Oil (Flying J) oil refinery in Bakersfield. If it were not for the gondolas, I would have definitely guessed that is where they were headed to. However, I have never seen any gondolas there. It seems like their usual customers for the coke is a local coke fired power plant and concrete plants. Although I do seem to recall the coke going to a calciner in Port Arthur, TX once, perhaps they have a rotory dumper. Do you figure these cars were headed to the refinery? Could they have been going to pick up old ties.
Also, Athearn recently brought back the old MDC Thrall coal gondola kit as pre-assembled cars. The ATSF cars (http://www.athearn.com/Products/Default.aspx?ProdID=ATH94457) jogged my mind. It seems like I remember seeing unit trains of these sitting in ATSF’s Bakersfield yard as a kid back in the late 1980s/1990s. I was trying to figure where these cars went to. My first throught was Savage Industries in Wasco, CA. They unload the coal inside of a building that I think looks too small for a rotory dumper. My next thought was Parr Terminal (now Levin Terminal) in Richmond, CA. However, it does not look like they have a rotory dumper either. Does anyone know if any coal fired power plant in Oregon, Washington (if there are any) or northern Nevada was buying New Mexico coal at this time? Could they have been exporting t
There is one coal-fired plant in Oregon, the560 MW Boardman plant of PGE (Portland Gas & Electric) near Hinkle, which burns PRB coal, and the 1,404 MW Centralia Plant of TransAlta Corp. at Centralia, which is a mine-mouth plant burning coal from the Centralia Field. I doubt either of these has ever burned any New Mexico coal. Nevada has two significant rail-served coal-fired plants, Nevada Power’s 616-MW Reid Gardner plant at Moapa, and the 521-MW Valmy plant near Battle Mountain, and again, I doubt either of these has ever burned New Mexico coal. Moapa has always sourced its coal out of Sufco or another Wasatch County or Carbon County mine (and maybe once or twice from Black Butte, Wyoming), and Valmy has been the exact opposite.
West Coast coal exports have been exclusively through the ports of Los Angeles, Stockton (a small amount), Richmond (a small amount), Vancouver, Prince Rupert, and Seward. Portland, Tacoma, Oakland, and Seattle have never had a coal-export capability other than ad hoc off the wharf using crawler cranes and clamshells, and I don’t think any of these ports have done that in appreciable quantity since the early 1950s. Portland started building a coal export facility in the 1970s, but stopped; it later became the potash export terminal.
There’s a number of reasons you might have seen Santa Fe coal gondolas in Bakersfield – coal for Savage Bros. from New Mexico; coal from New Mexico for export at Stockton; trip-leased to D&RGW-SP for coal from Utah to any number of California destinations, and the empties now returned to Santa Fe; petroleum coke for export; copper concentrates (not loaded very full) for export; dirty dirt; municiple sludge; ties.
Thanks for the reply, Mr. Hadid. I used the scale at the bottom left corner of the Google map to estimate the width of the unloading building (by the way, I changed the link) at approximately 33-1/3 feet wide. It also appears that the tracks are offset to one side. Does that sound wide enough for a rotory dumper? Unfortunately, Savage’s website no longer even lists the locations. Also, Walthers’s HO scale rotory dumper is a scale 56.5 feet wide, of course that is for woodchip gondolas.
Is that power plant at Valmy, NV the reason for WP buying the 240 (I think) 3-bay open top hoppers around 1979? Did UP keep these? Hopefully Carl is reading this.
It sounds like we can eliminate both NV power plants based on coal origin. I think we can also eliminate the Moapa power plant based on location. It seems like this is northeast of Las Vegas. I cannot think of a reason why a train from New Mexico to Moapa would be in Bakersfield. I am guessing that this power plant never used imported coal.
Another thought that hit me is imported coke. I know Geneva Steel used to import coke at Richmond, CA. It seems a bit far fetched, but is it possible that a steel mill in Alabama imported Chinese coke also? That does seems like a long haul to compete against domestic coke.
I did a search for Savage Industries and Wasco, in an attempt to find out if it has a rotory dumper. I found this link, http://socalrailfan.com/forums/archive/index.php?t-545.html, where someone stated that LAXT no longer handles coal. This reminded me that when I was there back in May, there was only coal and/or coke residue sitting there and no trains. I figured that they were just doing a large maintenance and/or repair project. However, that thread made me wonder. So I looked at the Port of Los Angeles’s Dry Bulk page. It only lists petroleum coke for commodities handled at LAXT. What happened to coal? Have exports declined? Do they g
So far, my research has uncovered that a weak coal export market comprising at least the years 2001 through 2004, had a significant, and negative, impact on LAXT. Also, LAXT and some or all of its investors are suing the Port of Los Angeles.
I don’t think Valmy had anything to do with WP acquiring cross-hoppers circa 1979. Valmy used its own rapid-discharge cars.
Imported coal to Nevada powerplants is extremely unlikely. The economics would be prohibitive, to put it mildly.
Imported coke to anyplace east of the Mississippi would move through the Panama Canal – or cross the world the other direction. Again, the economics would be against such a long rail move for such a low value commodity. Also coke is not very tolerant of rail moves (it crumbles, which makes it worthless for blast furnace charges). Geneva remarked that their purchase of Chinese coke didn’t work out very well as a lot more coke crumbled than anticipated.
Your last series of questions concerns coal exports through L.A. The long and short of it is that U.S. coal has always been a peaking supplier into the Pacific Basin off the U.S. West Coast (with the partial exception of the Usibelli Coal Mine in Alaska), because the coal, which comes from Utah, is expensive to mine (Utah coal is all underground coal) and the distance to tidewater is very long. Competitive Australian, Colombian, and South African coal is open-pit for the most part, and the mines are almost at water’s edge. There have been a lot of people fooled over the years thinking “This time, Utah coal exports to the Pacific Basin are for real; let’s build a megaport!” and while there’s been some surges they are so far all followed by collapses. Only when demand gets far out of whack with supply does Utah coal come into play, and either the demand soon drops back to normal levels, or the low-cost producers in Australia, Colombia, and South Africa add capacity and drive Utah out of the market without too much effort.
By the way, PRB or Hanna Basin (Wyoming) coal is even less competitive in the Pacific Basin because its low heating value, high moisture, high ash coal. The rule of thumb in coal is that the be
I guess this is the new mystery to solve. I wonder if it was for the US Steel mill at Geneva, UT. Of course CF&I and Kaiser both closed in 1982 or 1983. I would guess that there were probably signs that all of the western integrated steel mills were in trouble by 1979, which I would think would make WP reluctant to buy 241 cars for such an industry. Then again, the UT mill did manage to hang on until 2002 (if I remember correctly) as Geneva Steel. Perhaps this is the reason for these cars. So much informaton to uncover, so little time.
[quote user=“1435mm”]
I wouldn’t fault Trains for not reporting this; commodity flows take a lot of effort to track and there are a lot of “events” in commodity flows that are difficult to be certain are meaningful until time passes. Put another way, it’s hard to tell the noise from the signal until there’s a large data base collected. Commodity flow information is reported by the government agencies that collect it long after the fact, and often with lots of “W” (withheld) annotations to avoid disclosing p.roprietary information. There are private services that track commodity flows on almost real-time ba