Remeber that the first coal in Wyoming was found lying at the surface - so the UP survey teams knew where it was and how important it was to route the railroad that way. Of course, mining the coal in earnest did not begin until the railroad got there. That coal played into the decision to use the Wyoming route for the transcon rather than the southern route (now the Sunset route). Both were considered as early as 1840’s.
dd
Good point, dd.
Coal is a great, although polluting without cleanup, fuel. Coal was a local consumption commodity that really did not become a significant source of fuel in the US until about 1880. Coal had been found in many localities, however, without a means of transport it to market economically it could not compete with wood that could be chopped down anywhere there were trees. In the days of building the transcon railroad (1860-1869) roads were primitive and the haulage costs of the coal by oxcart would be uneconomical especially when you consided the volumes the railroads use. The eastern US railroads were in a better situation due to the extensive infrastructure and mines all over Applachia. Unless the mine was adjacent to a rail line it would not be a viable source of fuel for the railroads. Consider the transportation cost to haul the Power River Basin coal to market if the railroads were not there. I doubt that the PRB would have been developed without the UP and BNSF being there, except for a limited local consumption.
This was the case in the west before the advent of the railroads. Yes, coal had been discovered in many places in the west. The coal in Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, etc would only be mined in small quantities to satisfy the local market, which at the time of building the transcom was very limited. The advent of the railroads made coal a competitive fuel in America. UP was fortunate enough to have coal at Carbon Wyoming which they exploited for their fuel as it was trackside. The CP was devoid of coal along their line from Sacramento so they had to use wood. Fortunately there was considerable abundance of trees in the high Sierras to fuel their trains although through Nevada trees were scarce. Due to Union Oil’s testing of fuel oil in a SP steam engine in the '20s the SP found a source of local fuel for their California operations. If the oil experiment did not work today there might not be a tree in the high Sierras.
W R Watkins, P.E. Engineer of Mines degree from
Just a trivia note - the two replica steam engines at the Golden Spike National Monument were originally oil fired - buring used engine oil from Hill Air Force Base in Ogden. However, in a effort to improve authenticity, the UP replica was converted to burn coal and the CP replica now burns wood.
dd
I think that President Lincoln had a great part in choosing the route for the transcontinental railroad. Coal at Carbon Wyoming was found on the surface by the UP locating engineers, however, they would have not been surveying in this area if another route had been designated. Yes, the Sunset Route had better grades and not prone to snow that plagued the overland route. However, at that time we were engaged in the C civil War and Lincoln did not want to build a railroad that could possibly fall into the hands of the Confederacy.
Not all the Eastern RRs were so lucky. NYC had to build out to get WV coal and then haul it all over their system to fuel the locomotives. That long branch down into WV is still in service as part of NS now - was Conrail’s WV secondary.
The NYC steam locomotive tenders devoted a lot more space to coal than water as a consequence.
The Wyoming coal was known of before the UP locating engineers. My ancesters crossed Wyoming for the first time in 1847 - headed for Salt Lake. There is record of them both seeing and using coal for blacksmithing - repairs to wagon tires, etc. I know its not very good coal for that but it beats sagebrush and cottonwood. And your other points are also very true.
dd
Sagebrush?? In Wyoming??? Never!!!
A couple of somewhat random points, as a lot of issues have been covered well here.
The use of wood as boiler fuel became more and more a moot issue as the commercial lumber industry developed. Keep in mind that for any of these commodities, use as fuel has about the lowest economic value as one can conceive. Notwitholding the obvious disadvantages over bituminous and even sub-bituminous of low density, low BTU value and high moisture content, wood is also highly labor-intensive and could sell for a much higher price per board foot as construction product or even paper mill feedstock.
A good example of the breakdown wood vis-a-vis coal is in heavily wooded east Texas (lots of conifer and deciduous/evergreen hardwood forest) where the underlaying lignite had been mined since the mid-1800’s–first underground and then by stripping (still do–used for steam coal in power plants all over east and south Texas). Even though the stuff is essentially refined dirt (about 6500 BTU) it still paid the MP/IGN to develop a fleet of lignite-fired locomotives in the early 20th century that used local lignite on the divisions around Palestine and Longview on the old Eagle Route, if for no other reason than it could be handled so much more cheaply than wood, both on-board and on the ground. But if you want to get some idea of what a high-tonnage wood-fired locomotive might have looked like, take a gander at some of the IGN lignite fired power from that time period–BIIIIIIIG Boilers and lots of tare for substantially lower horsepower output and shorter range. Needless to say, when oil became available the switch was made.
Regarding oil, it has the highest BTU content, is the easiest to handle and store at the point of use, requires the least amount of fixed facilities (no tipples, just a pipe, no fires to drop, grates to clean, a***o convey and clog tubes, or clinkers), transports the easiest, burns the cleanest (everybody won on that one), results in the least maintenance re
Excellent post! I wasn’t aware the IGN used lignite. I had thought the only western road to delve into sub-bituminous or lignite in a big way was Northern Pacific, burning Rosebud sub-bituminous with a BTU of around 8,800 BTU/lb. As an aside, this coal was unfortunately called “lignite” at the time, instead of sub-bitumininous which has misled a lot of people since then.
Aren’t economics and geography fascinating? I can learn about this stuff all day.
I was just told that oil-fired locomotives on one major road usually had a 10-year heavy overhaul cycle while its similar-sized coal-fired locomotives had a 15-year heavy overhaul cycle, because the locomotives that were oil fired had greater thermal shock cycles in their fireboxes, which tore them apart faster.
OS
OS–
Hadn’t ever heard that. Doesn’t reflect that in large fixed boilers, although you burn gas when you can get it. The info I had generally regarded tube replacement, mechanical parts, etc. where oil was clearly superior (unless, of course it was loaded up with vanadium).
Interesting to hear about the NP equipment.
Yeah, eco and geo sure are fascinating.
The IGN lignite locos were good for a while, but can generally be regarded as a flop in the grand scheme of things. But the stuff is dirt cheap (another baaaaaaad pun) and the reclamation is generally outstanding since it starts out as pasture and ends back up that way. Needless to say, the IGN locomotives had to have large bunkers in their tenders and stopped often to refuel.
The area east and northeast of Austin is laced with old abandoned underground lignite mines. Not played out, just uneconomical. Somewhat OT but interesting: the only legal unlicensed lignite mine in the state is a brick operation where the lignite seam (fairly good stuff >6000) is overburden on the brick clay that they strip mine. They’ve tried all kinds of avenues of selling it for years but the quantities are not high enough.
Bottom line–you burn the fuel you can get the cheapest.
Now I seem to recall a Trains article back in the 70s about this – might have been written by Charles Mizell. I never paid much attention to it back then, being a callow youth, but now I guess I’ll have to find it and reread it.
This is what I saw in another forum in response to a question about overhaul intervals:
Jack Wheelihan said:
“At a really big back shop such as Altoona, West Burlington, Roanoke, Cheyenne, etc., it generally depended on the “class” of overhaul that an engine required. Such as a standard five year jacket & lagging ICC (now FRA) inspection, which also received new (or safe-ended) tubes, superheaters, running gear work, the time frame was only 1 to 2 weeks. A 15-year overhaul (10 years on an oil burning locomotive) would require a new fire box and possibly extensive boiler modifications/up-grades, and could take 3 to 4 weeks.”
Rich Melvin elaborated:
"The thermal stresses in an oil burner’s firebox are much greater than those in a coal burner. That big oil flame can be completely cut off instantly, which can allow the overall temperature in the firebox to change drastically in a very short period of time. By the same token, the flame can be brought back up to full intensity in a matter of seconds, raising the temperature quickly.
“On a coal burner, you have that bed of hot coals acting as a huge thermal sink and preventing any rapid changes in firebox temperature. Sure, you can stop the stoker and cut off the supply of coal to the fire, but that huge bed of burning coals acts to slow down any temperature drop and it happens very slowly. In an oil burner, the only thermal sink available is the firebrick around the firebox, and its mass and heat absorption value are nowhere near that of a hot bed of burning coal. Thus the thermal stresses set up in a coal burner’s firebox are much less than those of an oil burner. This means fewer broken staybolts, cracked sheets, checks in knuckle sheets, etc.”
dre, I would bet
Makes perfectly good sense to me.
OK, second time lately I’ve seen reference to vanadium in locomotive fuel being a bad thing. Why is it bad?
Woof, I’m a hopeless amateur when it comes to boilers, but here’s the extent of my knowledge:
Vanadium in conjunction with sodium is the primary source of slag in oil-fueled boilers. Most boilers are designed to run “dry” – temperatures are not hot enough to melt the ash content of the fossil fuel they combust. Slag is bad in a dry boiler because it sticks to cool surfaces like tubes, clogging them. Vanadium pentoxide, the form vanadium will be in boilers, has a very low melting point, so it slags. Vanadium is a fairly widely distributed element in nature, so it is present in many crude oil stocks. Vanadium is present in many heavy residual oils. That’s the kind of fuel you want to buy for a boiler, because it’s cheap.
OS
Lets take a little different track (no pun intended) on consumables for steam locomotives. What about water? This can be a problem. In many places in the west an ample supply of water is limited and many times what is there was “bad water”. The high mineral content of the bad water will foul the boiler and create problems. Several railroads had water conditioning plants to take some of the bad out of the bad water. I think some railroads in South America, in an attempt to cut down on water consumption, had condensers to condense the spent steam back into water and reuse it in the boiler.
South African railways also experimented with condensing steam engines.They had enormous tenders.
The water issue has always kind of baffled me, too. We all have a sense how much “new” water a steam locomotive required. But what about ocean-going ships in the age of steam? They clearly couldn’t use sea water in the boilers. But think about how much water the Titanic needed aboard to make a crossing. The answer seems to be condensers. It is just a guess on my part that size/weight ruled that out for most steam locomotives.
It was the UP. They just brought a unit train with a couple 90MAC’s down from the Power River Basin! [:D]
Seriously, though, I’ve heard Powder River coal is pretty awful stuff to burn in a steam locomotive. I heard a story about the Mid-Continent Railway museum getting a free load from the CNW or UP awhile back. I guess it was hard to burn well enough to do much with it. Not quite the nice stuff that comes from the Appalacian mountains.
lfish: The difference is that one had the ocean for a coolant, and the other the atmosphere. Think of the difference between sticking your hand into a 350 degree oven (safe if you don’t touch metal) and into a pot of 212 degree boiling water (not safe!). The ability of air to absorb heat, compared to water, is immense, so the size of the condenser becomes huge in order to get enough surface area, and fluid flow (thinking of air as a fluid) to achieve the same amount of cooling that could be accomplished in a steamship with something between the size of a refrigerator and a small walk-in cooler. Steamships from a very early date were condensing, and if operating in saltwater also had evaporators to supply make-up water as well as potable water. As steamships age they develop leaks, losing pure water to the atmosphere, and then the ability of the evaporator to keep up with the demand for water becomes the key to keeping the boiler lit and having steam to turn the screw. Loosing the evaporator on a steamship with a heavy demand for makeup water can literally mean the death of the ship, if it happens to be in shoaling waters with an onshore wind at the moment the evaporator craps out. More than one large ship has been lost from want of makeup water.
Almost every railroad operating through desert regions had to treat boiler water to remove alkali, along with many other roads. UP, SP, Santa Fe, D&RGW, WP, and T&P all spent immense sums installing and operating water treatment plants, and washing and maintaining boilers to remove mineral deposits. They were all glad to be rid of that albatross when diesels arrived.
OS