Canadian Pacific has a device in British Columbia which pours water onto unit coal trains to cut down on coal dust. Are there many of these in the United States ?
Never heard of them on the main lines before. Closest thing I can think of was the “Blue Coal” brand, which apparently somehow “painted” the top of coal loads blue. At least I recall reading something like that.
I know they spray the coal before shipping, but what do they spray? Is it affected by pouring rain and does it affect the burning of the coal? (obviously not, but…)
The MILWAUKEE Road used hinged lids on some of their Thrall cars to eliminate the dust. At least one of the mines in the PRB has sprayed oil on top of their loads for dust control and to increase the btu value of the product.
Appalacian Coal Mines sprayed oil as the coal came off the conveyor. Not much, just a very thin spray on them.
some of the mines in the coal fields that i use to hall trains out of sprayed the trains with oil to keep the dust down…i think that was only at federal or baily mines…not quite sure…but the rest of the mines that we got coal from didnt do it… and when we cranked the train up past station Sq in pittsburgh…the dust cloud was so dark that you couldnt see past the first 8 cars…lol… we crews got a kick out of it…when they opened up a few bars with outside seating we would laugh becouse they had to become covered in dust…lol…
csx engineer