Though my railroad is still in the planning stages, I’ve got a question on operations. Being a shortline fan and a coal railroading fan the BC&G has caught my eye as a good road to base a model on, while researching the road I came across a reference to gob operations but I am unclear as to what they are and how to model them, so my question is, exactly what are gob operations and are they worth including on a railroad? Thank for the help.
Mike
Gob is a coal-mining term for waste rock. Usually it’s dumped into disused or worked-out spaces underground. Sometimes it’s dumped on the surface outside the mine. I don’t know that a railroad ever hauled it away because it’s worthless. Undoubtedly at some times a gob pile was excavated, loaded onto a train, and dumped somewhere else because it was in the way of expanding surface facilities or track, but that would be unusual.
RWM
At the Japanese colliery I’m planning to (more or less) include in my layout, gob was handled in trains of mine cars pulled from the breaker (and a few from under ground) by battery locos running on 600mm gauge track. They were run through rotary dumpers that loaded skips, which then carried the waste to the tops of huge and growing mounds shaped like lopsided pyramids.
A mine of similar size a dozen or so kilometers down the track had a dedicated cable-pulled tramway, 762mm gauge, that crossed the valley to the ‘great gob mountains’ about two kilometers away. Those cars had a W cross-section; fixed trips opened the doors (about 2/3 of the side on each side hinged up) while a pair of fixed ramps pushed them shut and latched them.
I dimly recall being told about a breaker in the bottom of a West Virginia valley which received ‘raw’ coal from several mines, cleaned and sized it, then shipped it out. The gob was loaded into ballast cars and spread along the riverside right-of-way - partially to compensate for erosion, partially because there was no other place to dump it.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with a transplanted Kyushu colliery)
This interesting website on coal mining in Kansas
http://www.kgs.ku.edu/Extension/cherokee/coalmining.html
has a shot of a “gob” pile
Gob piles from coal mining in Crawford County, Kansas
It also has this to say:
Gob piles, the piles of discarded coal waste and fractured rock, are another problem associated with abandoned coal mines. These gob piles contain iron pyrite, sometimes called fool’s gold because of its yellow metallic luster. Pyrite is iron sulfide; when exposed to water and oxygen, pyrite undergoes a chemical reaction that produces sulfuric acid, iron oxides, and hydroxides. The iron oxides and hydroxides, similar to commun rust, tint these gob piles red. Sulfuric acid, however, pollutes both the water and soil around the mines.
In 1969, the Kansas Legislature passed regulations requiring coal companies to reclaim the land. Subsequently, more stringent federal regulations were enacted. Today strip mines must be converted into useful productive land. Once an area has been mined, companies must smooth out the ditches, replace the topsoil, and plant grass or crops similar to what was present prior to mining. In theory, once the land is leveled, it can be used for farming or grazing, but pyrite left behind from the coal mining must be buried because exposed pyrite can increase the acidity of the soil, making it hard to cultivate.
Dave Nelson