I read a while back that lumber yards used to sell coal for home heating and was thinking of adding that to my lumberyard on my layout set in 1956. However, further research has told me that coal as a home heating fuel peaked around WWI and fuel oil and later natural gas and electric began replacing coal as a heating source. By the 1950s, heating with coal would have been rare so I’m wondering how common it would be for a lumber yard to be selling coal in 1956.
Most of the contributors are listed as Anonymous making it difficult to figure out who is saying what. I’m guessing most of them are no longer members. It sounds as if by the 1950s, coal operations would have been largely phased out.
Lived in Plainfield NJ up until July '56 before moving to Syracuse… My best friends home was still heated with coal when I left… Don’t know how much longer that continued but probably for a few years at least. But that was not the norm and the market for coal had been reduced.
That was before my time, but it makes sense lumber yards may have been coal sellers back in the day homes were heated by coal. I lived in Syracuse between 1994 and 2009 and saw a few older homes had been heated by oil, but anything built past 1960, probably 1950 probably were not built with coal heading.
I would think by the 50’s, coal for home heating was on it’s way out of use and getting fewer and fewer. The demand for it for residential was likely dropping quickly so I doubt lumber yards would have carried much into the 1960’s.
So many residents of Syracuse have moved south, mainly to Florida. Although younger people seeking jobs have left to Maryland and Virginia as the economy in central NY appears to remain depressed.
My father-in-law built their home in 1948 in a coal producing area in PA and it had a coal furnace. That required tending the furnace each moring. He upgraded to oil burning by 1960 though surely many folks continued to heat with coal at home. The coal was delivered by a local coal company. The home had some wallpaper and each summer they had to clean it with a PlayDoh type material.
Don’t know whether lumber yards in the (coal producing) area sold coal then.
I have a lumber yard and some real A Rock & Minerals HO sized coal, so thanks for the idea of adding a coal bin. My transition era layout time span stretches just a bit…from a 2-6-2 Prairie to some GE C44-9Ws. So I have some coal burning steamers.
Our house on the east side of Cleveland still had a coal furnace in 1963. Our coal was delivered by the “City Ice Company”. I have seen advertising for several coal yards and many offered ice, sand & gravel, bottled gas, appliances, hauling and trucking along with lumber and, of course, coal.
Yards had to diversify in order to survive. In most areas of the U.S. anyway, coal sales were seasonal. Some switched over to fuel oil delivery.
I had some New Hampshire friends who were still heating with coal 30 years ago. I would imagine that there were small distributors even then. They must have gotten that coal somewhere.
Back in the 1950s, I had a lot of relatives living in Brooklyn, NY, apartments. I remember occasionally seeing coal being delivered even then. These deliveries were by small trucks and the coal went directly down a chute into the basement.
My elementary school was heated with coal at least until 1961, my grandparents in PA coal country, heated with coal through the 60’s I don’t know how they got their coal.
You can still buy coal furnaces, and, at least according to some websites, are making a come back, because wood furnaces are now regulated and coal is not.
Our local lumber yard sold coal until well into the 60’s. They had 2 concrete silos, and the coal was brought in by rail.
Right next to the lumber yard was a fuel oil dealer, with a couple of big tanks, also supplied by rail.
The coal silos were finally demolished in the 80’s to make way for more lumber storage, and when the owner of the fuel dealer died, the business closed, tanks were removed in the 70’s.
From what I’ve seen, it’s one of those “It depends” answers, and what it depends on most is a ready supply of coal. If you’re modeling a coal-producing region, especially in the East, there would probably have been enough customers to support a lumberyard-type coal distribution business through the '60s.
Part of the reason two-bay hoppers disappeared is because they were popular for making deliveries to coal dealers, who didn’t need huge shipments. Most two-bay hoppers were gone by the early '70s.
Back in 2010 i was on a bridge rebuild just north of Reading PA. I was very surprised to see a coal delivery to a house using a very modern truck that had the sissirs lift mechanism to lift the body to dump coal. I forget the company. Would it be possible to see a modern coal dealer served by rail. Potential is there. Reading and Northern would be the most likely rail seeing as it was most likely local mined.
A coal dealer doesnt have to be just coal. They can be any source of fuel and supplies. More variation the more likely to survive any one area downturn. Right below me used to be a huge fuel and ice dealer. Oil coal ice. if they were around today, propane and LNG aswell. Today the site is under the schulkyll expressway (ancient indian name. Means permanent long line of perpetual stopped traffic. You $&&((&). I want to build a modual of it since it was rather interesting
This is kind of thing really comes down to how much are you willing to stretch plausibility. But from what it sound like based of responses of others, you may not really be stretching it much or at all…
The thing is, your likely not modeling a specific industry, so your not 100% accurate anyway (an realistly can’t be). So what does it matter if you strench era a tiny bit.
Perhaps you could build a coal and lumber yard, but build it so the coal part is clearly in decline. Bring less cars in if coal than lumber, make the coal part less full of figures than the lumber part. Honestly I think it would be quite fun to model the yard that way!
the house i live in now [was my grandparents] was built in 1953, and was heated with coal … we had the coal chute and everything … by 1963 it was replaced with a natural gas furnace, as the lumber yard was getting out of coal storage, as it was now a very small item of their business …
My mother worked for Ackerman Coal in Toledo, OH they were about the largest coal supplier in Toledo. Many of the older homes had gas conversions done to the old coal burning furnaces in the late 50’s and 60’s. They were out of the coal business by about 1970 and were now fulling invested in their other businesses of Asphalt Paving and supplying Asphalt for their own work and for other companies.
The 50’s would have been the last years of most coal heated homes at least in my area. My families oil business started in 1931. It grew and grew until WW2. The goverment put a stop to any coal/oil conversions until the war was over. After WW2 we had our largest customer growth ever with people waiting in line at our office to get a oil conversion done. That lasted until the Korean War and slowed down a bit with goverment intervention again till that conflicy ended in 53. Our business area which is the western suburbs of Philadelphia Pa. the local gas utility had few lines back then so gas conversions were not that big a deal. Gas conversions started growing after lines had been run and the 1973 Gulf war.
There was a lumber yard across the tracks from our business on the PRR Main Line called Fritz’s. They started as a coal dealer back in the late 1800’s and remained so until the early 60’s. There were a number of lumber/coal dealers on the PRR main line . Some lumber dealers in our area did also offer fuel oil but most did not.
Well, no, not really. Even if peak consumption happened earlier and the majority were heated another way, that was the largely a function of new construction and regional population shifts. There were large numbers of coal heated houses into the 90s and beyond. I still catch a whiff of coal in West Pennsylvania and it’ll be the 2020s soon.
Lansing Ice & Fuel - my oil supplier - sold coal for a long time. I doubt many customers, at least in this area. Only users I knew were guys with oil barrel furnaces, in like a garage, using coal. In Brunswick, MD, along the B&O, my grandmother’s house heated with coal until maybe 1955. No shortage of coal on the B&O. I used to watch the guy load coal through the chute on the side of the house.
Not only did the coal furnace need its fire tended, but you had a big washtub of a thing UNDER the furnce, with a sloping ramp in the floor slab. She had to use a long hook to grab the handle on the tub and haul the ashes up from under the furnace, then slide an empty bucket back under. Someone had to take the ashes out.
Local University MSU had a coal power plant. Fluidized bed. Great huge piles of coal, several tracks for coal cars, and even a small switcher to push them around. Then they converted to gas, no more coal pile, pulled up the tracks, and no more switcher. I used to sneak over there at night and snatch a couple hunks of coal for gag Xmas stocking stuffers. Gas will just not stay in a stocking.
Really? What type of gas are you speaking of, natural gas or propane? One of my acquaintances can fill a room with natural gas and it seems to stay there for hours.