Crow's Nest Pass coal.

Does much coal from the Crow’s Nest Pass area on CP Rail find it’s way to American power plants?

Near zero. All of the coal coming to the US from the Crowsnest Pass area is Metallurgical Coal, to be made into Coke for steel production. Mittal Steel formerly Inland Steel is the largest buyer, but US Steel also buys from time to time. Met Coal can be used in a powerplant but its virtues for Coke making, and the fact that it is less available, mean that its higher price discourages its use for power generation.
One seam in the Crowsnest Pass area is only suitable for Steam Coal but its production tends to stay in Canada.

As far as I know most of the coal from that area is sent to Roberts Bank terminal in Delta to be shipped out to the far east - CP has dedicated coal trains running the circuit all the time.

Most of it does go to Roberts Bank, but by no means all of it.

Murphy, If you listen to the Twin Cities Radio Stream on Railroadradio.net, and you hear the CP River Sub. dispatcher taking to a 86x or 87x train that is a Crowsnest Coal train for Chicago. Seems to run about 3 or 4 trains per month.

I was told by someone who lives in Sparwood that 90% of the coal that comes out of the area goes to Roberts Bank. Some goes to the Kingsgate/Eastport exchange south of Cranbrook. Some goes east through Lethbridge & Medicine Hat before going to Thunder Bay or goes south of Moose Jaw to Chicago.

Are they still running black snakes on the Crowsnest? Yikes , years and years ago when we camped out in Blairmore we listened to these things heading west over the Frank slide, I’m surprised they are still in business. great memories. I also remember the massive piles of coal at Roberts bank waiting for Japanese andd Korean ships.

Why wouldn’t they be? (I am assuming that you’re referring to the late 60s coal cars that are permanently black, whether the paint is red or black) You’ve got effifcient transportation of 14,000 tons of coal, headed towards a needy, industrialized orient. Although traffic is dropping of…they’re still going to be around for a long time!

Where would those trains be headed? To a steel plant in the Chicago area?

I was told that there is enough coal in this area to last another 100 years. Another person said one mountain disappeared as a result of taking all the coal from it.

Mittal Steel at Indiana Harbor, IN is the biggest buyer. US Steel at Gary, IN buys a little
when they can’t get enough from US mines.

All the old steel gondolas have been replaced in coal service by new aluminum gondolas. There are a small number of the old red ones used for misc, purposes like hauling scrap ties etc.

Since when? I suppose with the recent export traffic drop-off, they might have retired them, but last year I saw plenty of them, in fact the majority of coal trains I saw last summer had the old bathtub gons on them…

There are still lots of old steel coal sets running into Roberts Bank, in fact there are still more steel sets than there are aluminium sets.

Docster:: are you referring to the Frank Slide ? where the whole side of a mountain that had a coal mine inside slid down the mountain and up the other side with many killed, another catastrophe was averted by someone stopping a passenger train befor it plowed into the slide, most of the town of Frank, Alberta was buried under 400 feet of rock and the highway is now on top of the rubble. the theory is the mining had no influence on the slide and it may happen again as there are new cracks at the top. this may be the story you heard of.

None of the coal from Crowsnest comes down to the UP at Kingsgate/Eastport.

tatans: No, the mountain I heard about was in B.C. The Frank Slide, which is somethings to see, is another story in itself.

funnelfan: Then how come I used to see coal cars go through Cranbrook, while I was living there, on its way to Kingsgate/Eastport?