Just how far did Applachian coal travel via train?

Model Railroader Prototype information for the modeler
1

I could see how coal might move economically via boat, but if coal needed to be shipped to something like the interior of the states of Illinois or Wisconsin, was it mined in the east and rolled via train from places like West Virginia?

Or did it go from the mines to boats on big rivers, which might go to the Great Lakes, then to Chicago or Sault Ste Marie, and then by rail to inland destinations?

2

The proto guys have mentioned videos and wheel reports from the 1950s that show N&W twin hoppers in California on the UP and SP, but that wasn’t all that common an occurance. Mostly, hoppers stayed in their home region.

Remember that there’s different types of coal, and that different sources of coal have been tapped at different points in history. In the good old days, most soft coal was used for powerplants, while hard coal was used for home heating. It wasn’t all that uncommon to see a Reading or LV twin hopper sitting in Wisconsin, on a team track (my own research has hinted that most fuel dealers in the Midwest didn’t have their own spurs. Instead, a twin hopper was spotted on an elevator siding, and the coal was dumped on the ground. Remember, manual labor was cheap back then!)

As for transloading between ships and rails, I’ve only ever heard of it being a one way deal. Trains pulled the coal out of the mountains, loaded it to ships, and the ships took it to it’s final destination. That’s one reason why heavy industry and power plants are situated next to navigable waterways: bulk mineral unloading. Coal might have been moved from ship to rails when we sold it overseas, but the American transportation system usually won’t ever do this, due to high time and cost considerations.

Chicago, until recently (mid-1960s) got almost all it’s coal from central Illinois. The C&IM, Rock Island, and C&NW would pull it out of the ground, move it to Peoria, and dump it into barges. From there, the barges would move the coal to Chicago, where clamshell scoops would pile it up for use by the utilities. Most steel production coal came from Buffalo on lake freighters. Coal heat dealers would get their coal from a variety of sources, depending on which salesman got to them first. Remember, every single coal car movement until about 1960 was an individual movement, by law. No such thing as unit trains and their discounts, so if you could get someone to buy your coal that was 10 states aw

3

A lot of opinion in some of the posts that shouldn’t be taken as fact without checking. A couple of points:

  1. Dependent on the era you model coal travels long distances in unit trains today. The Powder RIver Basin in Wyoming (I think) generates many trains daily for BNSF and UP now but CNW was a player before merger. That coal is going at least as far as Chicago to power plants due to the natural low sulfur content.
  2. In the early 70’s Detroit Edison contracted with coal sources in Pennsylvania to supply coal to their power plants and had unit trains with Det. Ed. power on the head end.
  3. Pennsylvania coal east of the Susquehanna was primarily Anthracite which is phenomenal stuff. When I was a kid in Philly we had a three day power outage due to snow and ice and my father was able to get two 25# bags of anthracite which burned in our fireplace with virtually no ash for the three days. A carload would last somebody a long time and was a premium commodity.
  4. As a kid in Philly both the PRR and the REading had elevated mainlines that were lined with coal dealer spurs that took 2-10 cars at a time. I suspect that was fairly common across the country back to the turn of the century. I suspect that the farther back in time you go the more likley the source was local since polution was a sign of progress not a hazzard.
  5. My opionion is that Appalchian coal rarely traveled west of the mississippi with the exception of antharcite but would have to research it.
4

Anthracite was the premium home heating coal, so it would have been in fairly major cities in the northern half of the country. But it probably wouldn’t have been the average heating coal west of the Mississippi. And as soon as oil or gas became common, it would have replaced by oil or gas heaters. There are still anthracite shipments in single car loads from PA to ID for a plant that make paint pigments (I have been told that the coal is used to make titanium oxide which is, ironically, a white pigment). Every so often a Reading, Blue Mountain and Northern hopper comes through Omaha.

Dave H.

5

Up here in New Hampshire we get unit trains from NS. I believe they orginate in PA somewhere. Back in the 70’s we got unit trains from P&LE (Pittsburgh and Lake Erie) then it was Conrail and now NS thru trains.

In the last few years the two major coal fired plants in New England (PSNH - Bow, NH and Mt Tom in Western, MA) have got some coal from the Powder River via UP/NS/GRS. Most of this has gone to Mt. Tom, but atleast 1 unit train came up her to Bow, NH.

I believe over 2,500 miles from Wyoming to Massachuttes and New Hampshire. It typically takes about 7-10 days to make it out here.

Josh

6

[quote]
Originally posted by orsonroy

tr
Chicago, until recently (mid-1960s) got almost all it’s coal from central Illinois.

The folks in Southern Illinois, also known as Little Egypt, are a proud lot and would be very offended at the reference to coal coming from central Illinois. The coal mines in Illinois are primarily in the Southern, not the central, part of the state. WGGH radio in Marion, Ill. used to announce which mines were working the next day as part of their newscasts. Similar services were offered on the air in Cairo (pronounced KAY row!)Metropolis and other Southern Illinois cities. The folks in that region feel slighted enought by being referred to as “downstate Illinois” by the folks in Chicago without having their coal production attributed to another part of the Land of Lincoln. Kind of a side issue, but important to some.

7

C&O shipped “Tide” coal and “Lake” coal from this part of WV. Tide coal, as the name implied traveled to Tidewater Virginia where it was loaded onto ships. Lake coal went to the Great Lakes. This was met coal.

For those who are modelers, shifters around here handled both C&O and VGN cars, depending on which mine shipped via which railroad. VGN cars were interchanged to that road, of course. It got interesting after the N&W swallowed up several other roads as we would see VGN, NKP and N&W cars in C&O yard at Raleigh. Traffic pattern remained the same, of course, until the entire mining picture changed around here roughly 10-15 byrs ago.

E. Briley - amen - Illinois miners were/are good folks to work with. BTW, you can win a lot of bar bets re existence of CB&Q coalfield service in Illinois. BTW, one of my all time favorite train names was the C&EI’s “Egyptian Zipper.” They don’t name 'em like that anymore.

Hope this helps

work safe

8

Sure there’s a lot of coal in Little Egypt, but most of the CHICAGO coal came from Com Ed mines, and they were pretty much all in central Illinois, and hauled out by the C&IM (a ComEd subsidiary), the IC and the C&NW. Southern Illinois coal headed to the Mississippi or Ohio rivers, to be barged elsewhere.

Most people don’t realize just how much coal sits under us here in Illinois. According to the ISGS, there have been over 4500 coal mines in 73 counties. If you REALLY want to know more, most of these mines have been mapped out and are online:
http://www.isgs.uiuc.edu/servs/pubs/coalmps.htm

Andn I’m a northern Illinois boy who knows better. While most people around Chicago (75% of the state’s population) think anywhere south of I-80 is southern Illinois, I know it doesn’t really start until about Centralia!

9

Whew… alot of fuel here to burn. I throw in my two tiny cents here…

1- OIL fired home heating was in my home as a child where homes had the ability to accomodate coal bunkers for heating. To have oil was to be modern in the day and very much one of the reasons coal was not really delivered to homes after WW2.

2- Speed is not important. What they want is STEADY supply. It was important for large steam to be able to keep that long coal train moving at 10 mph no matter what hill was in the way. And large yards stored trains of coal until it was needed at the port.

My two cents.

10

In the article about steel and railroads in the November 2002 issue of Trains the photograph of the rail yard at Geneva Steel shows a long string of NW/NS hoppers sitting there.

11

Here in Fargo, ND, there are regular carloads of coal in “Reading & Northern” coal hoppers that go west full of hard black diamonds. I really wish I knew where they were they went. From here they go west towards the Montana Rail Link.

12

You’re right about Centralia. Back when I was young and foolish and thought I was gonna be a star I worked at WCNT in Centralia. It has other call letters now. The local paper had a sign on their building which read, “Egypt’s Greatest Daily”. We did not air mine reports, but as I mentioned earlier WGGH did. It was fascinating for this city boy from Missouri to hear. "Mines working tomorrow: Mama Joliet, Papa Joliet, "…etc. For a while I couldn’t figure out what they were talking about.

Incidentally, Centraia was named after the Illinois Central railroad. Either IC or CB&Q (can’t remember) had shops there, and the town used to be litterally cut in two by railroad tracks with only a few grade crossings to get to the other side of town.

Cheers,

13

Check your maps. There just aren’t any navigable rivers between coal mining areas and the Great Lakes. To put it another way, those rivers of coal road on rails. P&LE and B&LE, for example, both lived on moving iron ore from Lake Erie to Pittsburgh and coal from the Pittsburgh area to Lake Erie. PRR did the same thing but, of course, was not as heavily dependent on such traffic – it was a much smaller percentage of their total traffic. Other roads moved coal to Great Lakes ports for trans-shipment but I’m not aware that they moved much iron ore from the lakes.

14

Thanks for the responses. It sounds like coal heading to Wisconsin could have come via the C&NW, if it originated in Illinois, but the high-grade anthracite would have to come from the eastern mines on cars from roads around there.

15

[quote]
QUOTE: Originally posted by ebriley

Not totally true. Here in Central Illinosi we had many strip mines in operation in Fulton County, CNW had tracks running out to the mines. Once EPA standards came into effect the mines all shut down. I remember as a child going out and watching the large shovels digging the coal. So his comment is correct as well as you are right, a lot is still or was mined in Southern IL.

16

ED

The Illinois Central had an engine back shop and roundhouse on the south side of town and the CB&Q had a roundhouse on the north side of town. I got to visit both in the early and mid fifties when steam was being shopped. During the later years, the Centralia facilities became a car shop until recently.

The IC gave one of their mountain class, 2500 to Centralia and it is in the park today on the west side of town off 161.

17

[ED

The Illinois Central had an engine back shop and roundhouse on the south side of town and the CB&Q had a roundhouse on the north side of town. I got to visit both in the early and mid fifties when steam was being shopped. During the later years, the Centralia facilities became a car shop until recently.

The IC gave one of their mountain class, 2500 to Centralia and it is in the park today on the west side of town off 161.

[/quote]

Thanks for the info! I’ve been gone from Centralia (and Illinois) since 1963 and, as I said, I wasn’t paying much attention to the railroad in those days. I do have some memories so some very kind local folks in that area, however.

Cheers.

Ed