What is it? And what color is anthrisite grey? I’m building some old steamer models and one of the colors is anthrisite grey.(for around the smoke stacks and boiler fronts)[?][?][?]
It’s a type of coal and it’s spelled anthracite.
Anthracite gray is a bluish gray.
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Andre
Are you sure you don’t mean anthracite? Anthracite is a type of coal that is very slow burning and great for stoves. It’s mostly mined in the northern part of PA. I think the Reading Railroad even called itself the Anthracite Road becuase that was it’s main source of revenue and what all of it’s engines burned.
Anthracite is an extremely hard coal produced by extreme geological pressures. It isn’t easy to ignite but once alight burns very hot and long. As a loco fuel it required special fireboxes so that it din’t burn them out. I would guess that anthracite grey was not so much a colour (the colour was a bi-product) as the lagging/coating of the smokeboxes to cope with the higher exhaust gas temperatures. It may have included asbestos.
Someone below says that antharcite is coal not a colour… looked in a paint catalogue lately? Anyway, after i posted this earlier I recalled that the LBSCR (London Brighton… on which my Great Great grandfather was a guard… had its locos painted a colour called "improved locomotive Green… which was a colour somewhere between Russet and Sand… not a hint of green anywhere. This was a colour produced by the loco engineer/designer… about 1880 I think. I suspect that in the search for paint that did the job and pigments that held their colour Stroudley ended up taking whatever made the mix green out of the mix. I also susoect that he had instructions from the board to use green paint… so his colour - that worked - got called “improved green”… the improvement meant it saved the company money by doing its job… the colour got lost in the system… SO WHAT I’M saying is that (especially as you quote the colour for the smokebox and stack) I would guess that someone found a coating that worked on locos burning anthracite… it might alternatively be that the anthracite roads either got into using it because it worked and/or because it looked good.
At the other end of the spectrum, before falling to peieces a peat, there was Lignite fuel… barely coal. This was very fibrous and flaky. Also dificult to light. calorific value wasn’t high (anthracite would be near the top of the scale for coals). It also needed special fireboxes. Given the crud that would be in the smoke the boiler tubes would probably have nee
If you want to model coal I recommend (wait for it!!) coal. Particularly the stuff that comes in small pouch shaped pieces for barbecues.Ii think it is coal dust that is held together with a binder. When it is crushed it seems to look just right. the lumps are about the right size. other coals have a tendency just turn to dust.
Pop some on your tender and it will look great.
Peter
Regardless what whoever calls it, anthracite is a type of coal and not a color. The color of smokeboxes, including the fronts, and of fireboxes on steam engines, varied from almost silver grey (and some called that graphite) to dark gray to black, depending on the railroad. Best one can do is decide what they want and then try to match it within the numerous colors available.
Go to Google, type in "define: anthracite " and hit search. (Google define is a very useful feature)!
Bryan
Anthracite is a very hard, slow but clean burning coal. The Delaware Lackawanna & Western billed itself as the road of anthracite. It developed an advertising character named Phoebe Snow to illustrate the clean burning qualities of anthracite. She was able to where a white dress while riding a train being pulled by a locomotive burning anthracite. Phoebe Snow later became the name of their premier passenger train.
As a kid growing up in Philadelphia around 1960 we had a mjor snow storm that took out the power for three days. My dad was able to buy the last two bags of anthacite coal from a local harware store. Different brands had different ways of identifying their coal and this brand had some blue dots on the coal that were obviously paint of some type. Any way once he got the first bag lit in the living room fireplace it kept the living and dining room warm for about a day and a half so the two bags were adequate for the outage. Most houses in the 40’s were coal heated in Philadelphia with most being converted to oil in the 50’s. My parents would talk about having to bank the coal furnace before retiring for the evening. The amazing thing to me who had never had any personal dealings with coal up to that point was that two 50# bags of anthracite left no more than a couple of tablespoons of ash. No wonder it was so revered in its day.
bluish coaalll…
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It is a blue-ish shiney, very hard, coal. Mother Hubbards, and Camelbacks, were two types of locos built specifically to burn it.
Everybody gets testy when somebody corrects spelling, but this is why spelling is important.
Lothar will find nothing about Anthrisite online.
He will find tons on Anthracite.
Dave H.
I looked up “anthracite grey” and color on Google and got the following web page from eMachineShop: www.emachineshop.com/finishing/powder.htm
According to that page, anthracite grey looks to be a modern, standard powder coating color for finishing metal surfaces. Both that website and numerous pages showing keyboards, coffee makers, computer cases in that color can be found from a Google search. The color seems to be popular in the UK at present. It seems to be a neutral but dark grey, judging from the color sample on the eMachineShop page.
-Ed
Actually anthracite could be a color, just like my car is painted “graphite”. Unfortunately there is no telling what that color actually was.
It is probably some dark grey color. I would pick a mix of graphite color and black.
Dave H.
I know what a camelback is but what’s a “Mother Hubbard” please? [:)]
A Mother Hubbard is where the cab is midway alongside the boiler. The terms camelback and camel were never “official”. Early in locomotive development some locomotives had the cab on top. Some called these camels and some called them camelbacks. Later the term camelback came to refer to the cab alongside the boiler.
Enjoy
Paul
Says Phoebe Snow:
“The miners know
That to hard coal
My fame I owe
For my delight
In wearing white
Is due alone to
Anthracite”
Advertising slogan used by the Lackawanna in the early 1900s.
Your sharper than me . I didn’t even pick up on that.[:P]. I got D’s in Engish in school because I was SURE these worthless computers would be able to read and spellcheck our thoughts by now!
Thanks for the replies everyone.
To go back to the orginal question… commonly graphite was used to protect the smokebox area of a steam locomotive (the smokestack and front of the boiler as it was orginally reffered to in the first post). When graphite is first applied it is a very dark grey, almost black. Over the years of operation the graphite will cure into the more silver color we commonly see on locomotives. Graphite is not a paint, in fact you could not paint the smokebox becuase of the super high temps the smokebox would take during it’s lifetime. The firebox was also protected with with Graphite.
A “mother hubbard” is a a “camel”. It has a large square cab on top of the boiler.
A camelback started as a Philadelphia and Reading “gunboat” style engine with a Wooten firebox and the cab sitting on top of firebox. It was sent to Italy and Europe to demonstrate the Wooten firebox. When it got over there they found it was too tall so the mechanical tem with it cut the cab down and moved it astride the boiler and the “camelback” was invented.
Dave H.