In trying to plan out my operational scenarios I’m begining to realize how much I don’t know.
Here’s what I think I know. Please correct/clarify me as required.
A loader operator would call somebody (who?) and ask to have loads picked up and empties dropped off.
The railroad would schedule a mine run out of the “local” yard with empties for everybody along the line and they would pick up the loads and bring them back to the yard.
Loads from multiple mine runs would be assembled into trains and forwarded to a “main” yard down the line.
Empties would be assembled into a train at the “main” yard and sent down to the local yard.
Here’s where I get fuzzy…
At what point in the process does an actual car number get assigned? I can imagine a scenario where the hoppers are as much a commodity as the coal itself and which specific car goes where doesn’t matter as long as everybody gets 2,500 tons of lump/egg… or whatever type was ordered.
I’ve seen pictures of rail yards full of loaded hoppers where it appears that each track is a different size. Is this how inventory was managed?
I is it true that the rail yards are used kinda like a coal warehouse where suppliers fill the yards and orders are filled out of the yards?
I think there are several answers to this question, depending on era and the industry the coal is going to. During the era pre-WWI, many railroads owned or were owned by coal companies. Typically coal going to the home heating industry was mined in Pennsylvania and shipped to storage depots in New Jersey, where it was unloaded and put in piles, then reloaded into railcars for wintertime distribution. So that’s one answer.
Second, a car moves based on a waybill. I don’t believe a car normally moves without one.This means even as an empty, it is identified by number and moves via an empty-car waybill.
A loaded car normally has a shipper and consignee. There may be some built-in delay in its movement (e.g., via a circuitous route), but I don’t believe it ever just sits with a load unassigned. The “warehouse” would be the coal storage piles c 1900 in places like New Jersey, but the coal is unloaded from a car there and eventually reloaded.
As far as I can see, photos of rail yards full of loaded coal cars basically represent a snapshot of the classification process. Every car in view has a destination and will presumably be classified and taken out within a fairly short period.
Here are a couple more thoughts. A single loaded car travels via a waybill to its destination – steel mill, power plant, coal pier, retail distributor, whatever. When unloaded, it’s taken to a yard where it is classified for return as an empty via an empty car waybill. Exactly where the empty is sent depends on the location, the railroad, the yard, the season, whatever. It eventually returns to a local yard in the coal mining region.
When the mine needs an empty car/s, it calls the local agent, or some equivalent, who orders the car, and it goes to the mine for loading via an empty-car waybill.
Two more factors to consider: What are the needs of the customer; and the cleaning and separation of the coal into grades (sizes).
Stoker coal tended to be a smaller size than lumps or blocks. For home heating, some households would economize by buying the larger sizes, or run-of-mine sizes, and breaking it up themselves. Often, railroads (even the major roads) would take run-of-mine directly into the tender from a mine tipple. I recall a story in Railfan Magazine, which told of a B&O articulated loco that suffered a stoker failure due to a mine roof bolt being wedged in the stoker screw. This coal had obviously not been cleaned and graded. On the other hand, some roads used cleaned and graded coal, and had nice, evenly sized coal lumps in the tender. In the early 1960’s, I visited the Buffalo Creek & Gauley and was told their steam locos used cleaned and graded coal in “nut” and “egg” sizes.
In some cases, a small mine might not have cleaning and grading facilities. This coal either went to customers who chose to do the sorting themselves or, more often, the run-of-mine coal was loaded into hoppers and sent to another larger mine where the coal was put through the cleaning and grading process.
For home heating, many small dealers couldn’t handle large quanties of each size. Twin hoppers in the 50-55 ton range were often preferred for this. Thus a coal dealer might receive a carload of one size, plus another carload of another. Large users like power plants often preferred larger 70 ton cars because 10 70 ton cars could hold as much as 14 50 tonners.
I’ve read about the Philadelphia & Reading, which started as a coal company which built a railroad.
Anthracite mines in Pa. are large, so I would think that many cars are swapped out at the collieries possibly after each shift. The P&R owns the mines and the RR.
these cars are brought to breakers which sort and possibly wash the coal.
a large yard, St Clair, up in mine country supports these operations. Trains orignate from it for steel mills in Bethlehem and destinations in Philly and NJ. At least one destination in Philly is the Reading Marine terminal. (later there was a Marine terminal in NJ I assume smaller yards in Philly and NJ for shipments to local coal companies for heating.
I assume all empties are put into trains destined for the yards in mine country (e.g. St Clair) and then distributed to the mines.
I’m modelling the delivery of coal to a small power plant, but not the mine or the power plant, so it’s simply loads northbound and empties returning.
I’m also modelling several coal dealers’ yards, and a couple of industries big enough to require their own coal delivery, too, so your information is much appreciated.
I’ll go ahead and drop in a plug here for Tony Koester’s article in the Feb 1997 issue of MR, which will probably say all the things dave said. Also there is an article in Trains magazine written by David P Morgan in the April 1956 magazine entitled “Tide 470”, which is about coal movement for export. You might also try your prototype railroad’s historical society for information about how it moved coal in the time period you are modeling and where it was moved.
No, they weren’t. A yardmaster was judged by how empty his yard was. The goal was to get the cars in, make up a train, and get them out. The ideal was the “just in time” method: get the empty cars to the coal company just when they’re needed so they can load them, and get them to the power plant etc. just as they’re running low on coal (although I’m sure in many situations a company using a lot of coal would have some type of stockpile.)
The same can apply to lake coal…They stock pile coal for the Laker before it arrives…I can tell when they are going to load a Laker at Sandusky…There’s a unusual amount of loaded coal trains bound for Sandusky.