Hi, I’m looking to get back into things MRR wise, and obviously by my avatar you can see I’m an NYC fan.
I’ve started thinking about a design for a layout, and I have a question regarding how plausible it would be to have a New York Central layout that primarily services a coal mine. I would like to have a small company owned town/houses/coal mine, and that would be the primary industry.
Did the NYC get much into coal country? Did they have anything to do with running coal as freight, or did C&O/N&W, etc. mostly corner that market in the East? Typically you think fast, mainline freights with the NYC, and haven’t seen much source material showing them hauling coal through the hills.
Back when I was a Noo Yawker the NYC hauled a lot of coal - but, at that time, so did everyone else. Not much, “Through the hills,” though - NYC was, “The Water Level Route,” the ONLY water level route from the Atlantic Coast to the Mississippi north of Louisiana. Their one bad grade, West Albany Hill, would have been considered level track on the Santa Fe.
I don’t know about coal mines on NYC rails (I never got into coal country back then) but I do know there was an immense aggregate processing plant and quarry south of Poughkeepsie on the east side of the Hudson. The crushers were clearly audible where I was on the opposite bank.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - in a Southern Nevada garage)
Looking at the NYC system map, it seems they got into West Virginia. I’m thinking maybe they hauled some coal in that area between the parent line and T&OC/K&M. Anyone see any pictures of this area or have any other information?
I’m not planning on building an exact area of the NYC, just wanted it to be a plausible region to be set in. I’m mainly looking to run Mikes and Mohawks for power, and not much passenger equipment at all on this.
The NYC moved lots of coal through several railroads who were either Subsidaries, or eventually part of the NYC System. As a previous poster mentioned the Toledo and Ohio Central, which eventually became part of the NYC proper and ran from West Virginia up through Ohio to the Lakefront Docks in Toledo Ohio. The PMcK&Y was in the Pittsburg PA area and serviced coal mines south of Pittsburg, and was interchanged with the P&LE, which was also a member of the NYC System. If you do a Wikipedia on either of these two railroads you will probably find information. I have a fair size layout and since I lived in Toledo Ohio I felt as if I must have coal operations, as that is one of the things that made Toledo one of the largest rail centers in the USA. My Grandfather worked for the T&OC, my dad for the C&O, so on my layout the C&O has the coal mines, with interchange with the NYC. In Toledo the Transloaded coal into lake boats (think 700 plus feet) for steel industries in and around the great lakes, The Ford Motor company Rouge River plant was a big user, as well as others in Gary Indiana and elsewhere. in the Pittsburg area they moved coal that was eventually going to the steel industry around Pittsbury and to be shipped up through Erie PA. There was probably other NYC sources for coal, but that was two major sources going out of the coal fields. This is just scratching the surface and in my generalizations I probably adjusted some of the minor points. There was also much coal used for heating of homes as well as powering boilers for factories and other medium to heavy industries, and I am sure some of the coal from those sources were used for that.
There is a mention of the NYC hauling coal in West Virginia on page 32 in the book New York Central Railroad Color History. There is also a photo of a NYC lightning striped GP7 with dynamic brakes and a coal hopper. The background is green mountains.
Another substantial NYC coal hauling location was the Ashtabula Docks
If you were to get a USGS map of the Charleston, WV area you would see that the NYC had substantial mine run trackage east of Charleston, WV. So that would be a major source of the coal traffic on the NYC and a lot of that was shipped to Toledo and then sent by ship from Toledo to ports all around the Great Lakes.
Take a look at the Canada Southern website and peruse the freight car classes of the NYC and you will see they had a substantial number of Coal Hopper lots manufactured or rebuilt over time.
I appreciate everyone’s help and information. So, I guess Pennsylvania or West Virginia would be good locales for this railroad I’ll be building.
Regarding those areas, would it be ok to use New York Central lettered locomotives, or would I be more into the NYC “System” subsidary lettered roads only?
I I believe at least some of the NYC’s 2-6-6-2s were used in coal country, and those were NYC engines. You might find more info if you post this on the New York Central forum at railroad.net. The T&OC merged into the NYC in 1938, so after that date engines would (I assume) just say “New York Central”.
The answer is yes. They had mines to provide coal for a number of their major railroad station including Buffalo Central Terminal, it used 72 tons of coal a day. Check out the NYCHS, they might have more information.
Most of the mines in southwestern West Virginia are served by branches off the C&O main line along the New and Kanawha River valleys, with a few of the mines on these valleys served by a long branch of the New York Central. Further south, the mines are served by branches off the Virginian and branches off the north side of the Norfolk & Western Pocahontas line. Coal traffic flows off those branches served by the New York Central generally heads north or northwest to customers in the industrial heartland.
I think I have most of the basic information I need. I knew about the NYC Mallets, but honestly I’m not too interested in modeling them, nor have I seen a brass model of one anyway (so far).
The MR magazine Virginian project layout peaked my interest, and I want to make something in that style in a larger space. Now I can do something like that with the NYC.
the old big four cairo division reached as far south as cairo illinois and was almost all coal traffic. most of the activity was centered around harrisburg illinois where we humped and forwarded 4 to 5 hundred car loads each day. a lot of the coal went to utility plants in southern illinois and indiana and quite a bit went all the way to the great lakes to be loaded out on boats.
I believe the NYC ran from Indianapolis to Evansville over a rather gradeless line and accessed the surface coal strip mines that populate southwestern Indiana via this route. They possibly accessed them directly or by switching with coal shortlines in the area.
The mines are still active and the line is used by the Indiana Southern RR now. You might do some research and discover that the history of this area might allow you to have an NYC coal train on a flat midwestern grade, if you desire.
The line that ran to Clearfield was the Beech Creek branch. Theres some info on the web on this line at the links below. The second link has some links to other sites about the company towns.
I know the NYC’s Big Four route in Southern Indiana and Southern Illinios had several coal mines as well as power plants and oil refineries . For what ever reason this part of the NYC dosn’t get looked at too much , but it might be an idea !!
The NYC did run from Corning NY into the Clearfield PA coalfields and actually ran through the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon region. The roadbed is now a Rail Trail.
Actually the part of the NYC that you may want to investigate was one of its most isolated and unknown aspects – northern Illinois where there was a surprising amount of coal mining that went on. I cannot say for certain that the NYC it self served any of those mines but it sure was within physical sight of them. This was perhaps the furthest and most isolaed extension of the New York Central, certainly the most isolated that I know of.
If you can find Streator IL on the map, the NYC came into town almost directly east/west. from Streator the NYC headed west and then north, crossing the Illinois River at Howe, then north and east to Ladd. I believe a mine at Seatonville was on the NYC, although the trackage was also shared with C&NW. It then headed north and west again to Zearing on trackage shared with the CB&Q. I believe there was some other shared trackage in the Ladd area and it may be that the NYC had other small branches near Ladd. You can still see huge piles of mining tailings in the Ladd area.
It was in this general area that the Milwaukee Road had its famous St Paul mine at Cherry, site of one of the most awful mine fires and disasters and very thoroughly documented, including the heart breaking “goodbye” letters written to their families by trapped and suffocating miners, at the Cherry public library, which also features a superb HO scale train diorama showing the entire mine area as it was served by rail. The line to that mine came due north from Ladd. There are still piles of mine tailings at Cherry near the cemetary that holds so many of the miners.
I don’t recall coming across references to NYC hauling coal from Illinois. I think by the time they got there, Illinois Central, Milwaukee Road and other more “local” roads had the business sown up.
I do still think the most NYC coal lines were SE Ohio into West Virginia.