Dang, sucked into an 11 year old necroed topic!
Here I was reading the first several posts and then felt a disturbance in the Schwartz! Who are these names I never saw for years. Then I saw Jeffrey Wimberly and it dawned on me. Here we go again. Someone brought an ancient topic back from the dead.
*Sigh*
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
ndbprr...A really good substitute and is under $5.00 for a 50 pound bag is a grit blast media called Black Beauty.....
I did a 44 car train of Athearn 2-bay hoppers loaded with Black Beauty - trailing tonnage was 22lbs - you'll need some good motive power...one of these...
...at a weight of just over 33oz.....
...and with two motors...
...couldn't quite get the entire train up an "S"-bend on a 2.8% grade.
However, two of those locomotives made very short work of it. I had lots more "coal", but no more hoppers.
ndbprr...It is an aluminum oxide material...
Actually, it's coal slag, and does have some magnetic material within it. The steel plant where I worked used in lieu of sand, for traction in their locomotives.
Here's one of those Athearn hoppers loaded with Black Beauty (8oz total weight)...
...and a similar car loaded with coke breeze (total weight about 4oz. and rather dusty to handle)...
Most of my open cars use "live" (loose) loads, and while the coke breeze is more suitable in appearance for supplying the road's coaling towers and the electric generating plant, the various coal dealerships on the layout receive carloads of both types, the coke breeze representing bituminous (soft) coal, and the shiny Black Beauty a stand-in for anthracite (hard) coal.
riogrande5761Dang, sucked into an 11 year old necroed topic!
Me too! After your post, I went back through the entire thread, just to make sure that I hadn't already replied with the same info shown above.
Wayne
Now that almost everyone has been drawn in, where does one purchase “coke breeze”?
(and I don’t wish to hear at the Acme on the shelf next to Diet Coke, Pepsi, and ginger ale.)
doctorwayneriogrande5761 Dang, sucked into an 11 year old necroed topic! Me too! After your post, I went back through the entire thread, just to make sure that I hadn't already replied with the same info shown above. Wayne
Fool me once, shame on you (whoever necro'd this topic). Fool me twice, shame on me!
maxman Now that almost everyone has been drawn in, where does one purchase “coke breeze”?.....
Now that almost everyone has been drawn in, where does one purchase “coke breeze”?.....
I'm actually hoping that I can buy a bucket of it from the steel plant where I worked before retirement, but I think it's probably a longshot.
Basically, it's simply the "fines" from coke, which is made by burning coal in an environment with limited oxygen. A bucket's-worth or-so, somehow collected in the cuffs of my overalls, many years ago, and I discovered it only after I got home....well. that's my story, anyway, and I'm stickin' to it!
doctorwayneA bucket's-worth or-so, somehow collected in the cuffs of my overalls, many years ago, and I discovered it only after I got home....well. that's my story, anyway, and I'm stickin' to it! Whistling
Reminds me of the story about the guy working in the Gulag who left everyday with a wheelbarrow full of saw dust. The guards always searched through the sawdust looking for stolen property. Never found any.
Someone asked the man what he was doing with the saw dust. He said "oh, I just dump that. I'm stealing the wheelbarrows".