Lionel fake coal?

[Boyd]

Well now I'm collecting the Lionel blue C&O 9304 side dump cars. I have 5 now. I don't know if I will ever get up to having 71 of them like the 71 CN 9013 cars I have. I just got one new in the box 9304 with the dump tray and a bag of fake coal. I'm not sure but I think the fake coal might be plastic bits painted black. Someone tell me if it is something different. I wonder since it is from almost 40 years ago could it have lead in the paint? Can cats be attracted to it? One of my cats likes to lick the thin plastic bags that Wal Mart and grocery stores use,,, so I watch what bags I leave out that my cat can get to. I put the fake coal inside of a plastic jar and put the lid on it. Can fake coal still be bought separately from a dump car? When I think of other stuff to use in a dump car the impediments are weight, dust and food based items could attract rodents.

[lionelsoni]

I would be surprised if the coal is painted.  It is just too easy to make intrinsically black plastic.

[sir james I]

Agree, I think it's just black plastic. Fine for dump cars but too light for belt coal loaders.(#397)

EDIT: An after thought. The plastic might have a release agent on it that could attract animals I guess. So a dish soap wash might help.

[BigAl 956]

Lionel uses surplus black plastic parts for coal. They throw into a grinder whatever is lying around. For something more realistic there are non-Lionel repro coal bags available that resemble small lumps of coal. I do not believe they are painted.

[Firelock76]

Lionel's original coal was made of bakelite, a rudimentary form of plastic.   I doubt your cats are likely to ingest enough of it to be a problem, they may not even be interested.

Or, you could do what some kids did years ago and put marbles in the dump cars!

[Dave632]

Boyd

Well now I'm collecting the Lionel blue C&O 9304 side dump cars. I have 5 now. I don't know if I will ever get up to having 71 of them like the 71 CN 9013 cars I have. I just got one new in the box 9304 with the dump tray and a bag of fake coal. I'm not sure but I think the fake coal might be plastic bits painted black. Someone tell me if it is something different. I wonder since it is from almost 40 years ago could it have lead in the paint? Can cats be attracted to it? One of my cats likes to lick the thin plastic bags that Wal Mart and grocery stores use,,, so I watch what bags I leave out that my cat can get to. I put the fake coal inside of a plastic jar and put the lid on it. Can fake coal still be bought separately from a dump car? When I think of other stuff to use in a dump car the impediments are weight, dust and food based items could attract rodents.

 My cats show no interest in the Lionel coal.

They do however play Godzilla cat with the town and scenery.

Here Catzilla randomly tramples the town and it's inhabitants flattening them while resting.

[Buckeye Riveter]

Has anyone ever had success using black aquarium gravels for coal ?  

[Boyd]

Its too heavy for MPC side dump cars and there is some dust.

[Kooljock1]

Lionel Post War "coal" was made from the Bakelite casting process. 

Bakelite which (in black) was used in the manufacture of transformer shells, OCS controllers, and nearly all of the Accessory activator buttons was what they called a "one-drop" plastic.  In other words, one drop, and it would crack.  It would also often crack when being removed from the molds.  This is why Lionel tossed the tooling for the Irvington cars.  Too many of them were being cracked on removal from the molds. 

When a ZW or KW 97 Coal Loader base or controller did emerge with an imperfection, Lionel workers would toss it into the grinder, and presto: COAL!

Today's coal appears to be made the same way from broken parts and sprues from the manufacturing process.  It is molded black plastic.  No lead.

Jon