I read a while back that lumber yards used to sell coal for home heating and was thinking of adding that to my lumberyard on my layout set in 1956. However, further research has told me that coal as a home heating fuel peaked around WWI and fuel oil and later natural gas and electric began replacing coal as a heating source. By the 1950s, heating with coal would have been rare so I'm wondering how common it would be for a lumber yard to be selling coal in 1956.
I found this old thread from 2001 on the subject:
http://cs.trains.com/mrr/f/88/p/1294/5197.aspx
Most of the contributors are listed as Anonymous making it difficult to figure out who is saying what. I'm guessing most of them are no longer members. It sounds as if by the 1950s, coal operations would have been largely phased out.
Lived in Plainfield NJ up until July '56 before moving to Syracuse.. My best friends home was still heated with coal when I left.. Don't know how much longer that continued but probably for a few years at least. But that was not the norm and the market for coal had been reduced.
It makes sense that would explain why in work terms (I write workers compensation) the code for a lumber yard is also the code for a fuel distributor.
Joe Staten Island West
floridaflyer Lived in Plainfield NJ up until July '56 before moving to Syracuse.. My best friends home was still heated with coal when I left.. Don't know how much longer that continued but probably for a few years at least. But that was not the norm and the market for coal had been reduced.
That was before my time, but it makes sense lumber yards may have been coal sellers back in the day homes were heated by coal. I lived in Syracuse between 1994 and 2009 and saw a few older homes had been heated by oil, but anything built past 1960, probably 1950 probably were not built with coal heading.
I would think by the 50's, coal for home heating was on it's way out of use and getting fewer and fewer. The demand for it for residential was likely dropping quickly so I doubt lumber yards would have carried much into the 1960's.
So many residents of Syracuse have moved south, mainly to Florida. Although younger people seeking jobs have left to Maryland and Virginia as the economy in central NY appears to remain depressed.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
My father-in-law built their home in 1948 in a coal producing area in PA and it had a coal furnace. That required tending the furnace each moring. He upgraded to oil burning by 1960 though surely many folks continued to heat with coal at home. The coal was delivered by a local coal company. The home had some wallpaper and each summer they had to clean it with a PlayDoh type material.
Don't know whether lumber yards in the (coal producing) area sold coal then.
I have a lumber yard and some real A Rock & Minerals HO sized coal, so thanks for the idea of adding a coal bin. My transition era layout time span stretches just a bit...from a 2-6-2 Prairie to some GE C44-9Ws. So I have some coal burning steamers.
Paul
Modeling HO with a transition era UP bent
Our house on the east side of Cleveland still had a coal furnace in 1963. Our coal was delivered by the "City Ice Company". I have seen advertising for several coal yards and many offered ice, sand & gravel, bottled gas, appliances, hauling and trucking along with lumber and, of course, coal.
Yards had to diversify in order to survive. In most areas of the U.S. anyway, coal sales were seasonal. Some switched over to fuel oil delivery.
Regards, Ed
I had some New Hampshire friends who were still heating with coal 30 years ago. I would imagine that there were small distributors even then. They must have gotten that coal somewhere.
Back in the 1950s, I had a lot of relatives living in Brooklyn, NY, apartments. I remember occasionally seeing coal being delivered even then. These deliveries were by small trucks and the coal went directly down a chute into the basement.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
My elementary school was heated with coal at least until 1961, my grandparents in PA coal country, heated with coal through the 60's I don't know how they got their coal.
You can still buy coal furnaces, and, at least according to some websites, are making a come back, because wood furnaces are now regulated and coal is not.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
Our local lumber yard sold coal until well into the 60's. They had 2 concrete silos, and the coal was brought in by rail.
Right next to the lumber yard was a fuel oil dealer, with a couple of big tanks, also supplied by rail.
The coal silos were finally demolished in the 80's to make way for more lumber storage, and when the owner of the fuel dealer died, the business closed, tanks were removed in the 70's.
Mike.
My You Tube
John-NYBWI read a while back that lumber yards used to sell coal for home heating and was thinking of adding that to my lumberyard on my layout set in 1956. However, further research has told me that coal as a home heating fuel peaked around WWI and fuel oil and later natural gas and electric began replacing coal as a heating source. By the 1950s, heating with coal would have been rare so I'm wondering how common it would be for a lumber yard to be selling coal in 1956.
From what I've seen, it's one of those "It depends" answers, and what it depends on most is a ready supply of coal. If you're modeling a coal-producing region, especially in the East, there would probably have been enough customers to support a lumberyard-type coal distribution business through the '60s.
Part of the reason two-bay hoppers disappeared is because they were popular for making deliveries to coal dealers, who didn't need huge shipments. Most two-bay hoppers were gone by the early '70s.
Eric
Back in 2010 i was on a bridge rebuild just north of Reading PA. I was very surprised to see a coal delivery to a house using a very modern truck that had the sissirs lift mechanism to lift the body to dump coal. I forget the company. Would it be possible to see a modern coal dealer served by rail. Potential is there. Reading and Northern would be the most likely rail seeing as it was most likely local mined.
A coal dealer doesnt have to be just coal. They can be any source of fuel and supplies. More variation the more likely to survive any one area downturn. Right below me used to be a huge fuel and ice dealer. Oil coal ice. if they were around today, propane and LNG aswell. Today the site is under the schulkyll expressway (ancient indian name. Means permanent long line of perpetual stopped traffic. You $&&((&). I want to build a modual of it since it was rather interesting
Wolfie
A pessimist sees a dark tunnel
An optimist sees the light at the end of the tunnel
A realist sees a frieght train
An engineer sees three idiots standing on the tracks stairing blankly in space
This is kind of thing really comes down to how much are you willing to stretch plausibility. But from what it sound like based of responses of others, you may not really be stretching it much or at all...
The thing is, your likely not modeling a specific industry, so your not 100% accurate anyway (an realistly can’t be). So what does it matter if you strench era a tiny bit.
Perhaps you could build a coal and lumber yard, but build it so the coal part is clearly in decline. Bring less cars in if coal than lumber, make the coal part less full of figures than the lumber part. Honestly I think it would be quite fun to model the yard that way!
Regards, Isaac
I model my railroad and you model yours! I model my way and you model yours!
the house i live in now [was my grandparents] was built in 1953, and was heated with coal ... we had the coal chute and everything ... by 1963 it was replaced with a natural gas furnace, as the lumber yard was getting out of coal storage, as it was now a very small item of their business ..
My mother worked for Ackerman Coal in Toledo, OH they were about the largest coal supplier in Toledo. Many of the older homes had gas conversions done to the old coal burning furnaces in the late 50's and 60's. They were out of the coal business by about 1970 and were now fulling invested in their other businesses of Asphalt Paving and supplying Asphalt for their own work and for other companies.
Rick Jesionowski
Rule 1: This is my railroad.
Rule 2: I make the rules.
Rule 3: Illuminating discussion of prototype history, equipment and operating practices is always welcome, but in the event of visitor-perceived anacronisms, detail descrepancies or operating errors, consult RULE 1!
The 50's would have been the last years of most coal heated homes at least in my area. My families oil business started in 1931. It grew and grew until WW2. The goverment put a stop to any coal/oil conversions until the war was over. After WW2 we had our largest customer growth ever with people waiting in line at our office to get a oil conversion done. That lasted until the Korean War and slowed down a bit with goverment intervention again till that conflicy ended in 53. Our business area which is the western suburbs of Philadelphia Pa. the local gas utility had few lines back then so gas conversions were not that big a deal. Gas conversions started growing after lines had been run and the 1973 Gulf war.
There was a lumber yard across the tracks from our business on the PRR Main Line called Fritz's. They started as a coal dealer back in the late 1800's and remained so until the early 60's. There were a number of lumber/coal dealers on the PRR main line . Some lumber dealers in our area did also offer fuel oil but most did not.
John-NYBWBy the 1950s, heating with coal would have been rare
Well, no, not really. Even if peak consumption happened earlier and the majority were heated another way, that was the largely a function of new construction and regional population shifts. There were large numbers of coal heated houses into the 90s and beyond. I still catch a whiff of coal in West Pennsylvania and it'll be the 2020s soon.
Lansing Ice & Fuel - my oil supplier - sold coal for a long time. I doubt many customers, at least in this area. Only users I knew were guys with oil barrel furnaces, in like a garage, using coal. In Brunswick, MD, along the B&O, my grandmother's house heated with coal until maybe 1955. No shortage of coal on the B&O. I used to watch the guy load coal through the chute on the side of the house.
Not only did the coal furnace need its fire tended, but you had a big washtub of a thing UNDER the furnce, with a sloping ramp in the floor slab. She had to use a long hook to grab the handle on the tub and haul the ashes up from under the furnace, then slide an empty bucket back under. Someone had to take the ashes out.
Local University MSU had a coal power plant. Fluidized bed. Great huge piles of coal, several tracks for coal cars, and even a small switcher to push them around. Then they converted to gas, no more coal pile, pulled up the tracks, and no more switcher. I used to sneak over there at night and snatch a couple hunks of coal for gag Xmas stocking stuffers. Gas will just not stay in a stocking.
TSC carries coal stoves and bagged coal so,coal stoves is still is being used.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
EnzoampsGas will just not stay in a stocking.
Really? What type of gas are you speaking of, natural gas or propane? One of my acquaintances can fill a room with natural gas and it seems to stay there for hours.
Who's to say that the residential structures on and around your layout are no longer heated by coal? If you want to add coal sales to your lumber yard, it's your choice.
Hornblower
Just to add to the discussion, my grandmothers house in Detroit was heated by coal into the mid 1960s. My dad and uncle had her convert to gas but the old system wasn't very efficient, she complained the the gas bill was too high! Lots of coal left in the basement bin for young model RRs to fill HO hoppers with.
NVSRRBack in 2010 i was on a bridge rebuild just north of Reading PA. I was very surprised to see a coal delivery to a house using a very modern truck that had the sissirs lift mechanism to lift the body to dump coal.
Jordan made an HO coal truck with that scissors mechanism - an old Mack truck as I recall. Coal trucks tended to last a long time so one could put a somewhat more modern truck front on that model - say 1940s era - and it would have been plausible into the 1960s.
Selling coal for residential and business heating (as opposed to for electricity generation) would of course be seasonal so it stands to reason that coal dealers would do something else - lumber as indicated, but in my recollection, more commonly "ice and coal" companies, many of which probably were making their real money selling fuel oil even as they kept that "ice and coal" name. There were several such "ice and coal" companies in the Milwaukee area into the 1960s.
My dad told me that the customers in the 1920s and 30s had a two-sided cardboard placard for the window - one side indicated you needed ice, the other side indicated you needed coal. The way you turned it indicated how much you needed.
Here in Milwaukee the last big dealer in residential heating coal, Schneider, finally called it quits in, I think, the late 1980s. In the mid 1980s I moved to a quiet and someone old fashioned residential neighborhood and I could tell from taking my nightly walks in the fall and winter that more than a few of my neighbors were unmistakably burning coal in their furnace. From time to time I could also tell that some of those neighbors also had incinerators for garbage - another unmistakable aroma.
It was probably more practical to be a hold out and still have a coal furnace into the 1960s to 1980s than it would have been to have a true icebox instead of a refrigerator.
Dave Nelson
peahrensThe home had some wallpaper and each summer they had to clean it with a PlayDoh type material.
My aunt and stepuncle lived in Chicago. We would go down from central Wisconsin to visit and for my dad to work through Aunt Frances' list (her "honey" wasn't able to do much of the honey-do stuff). I remember that one year dad had to clean the wallpaper withthat stuff. It worked well. After coal firing died out, the cleaner manufacturer struggled to figure out what to do with their product, and eventually marketed it as Play-Doh, and the business took off from there.
rws1225Lots of coal left in the basement bin for young model RRs to fill HO hoppers with.
Playing in the coal bin? I remember thinking that would be a good idea. Unfortunately Mom had other thoughts as she was hosing me off.
My grandparent's house in Utah was burning coal for heat well into the mid- 1960's. I don't think it got rare until the 1970's.
The house I stayed in Nashville while I was in college still had coal in the basement, but no coal furnace. I don't know how long it had been there.
.
None of that coal was there when I left.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Mom was home with younger kids! Dad was less worried about a little coal dust.
I suspect it would depend on the area you're modeling - not just what part of the country, but when the buildings on your layout were built. Very few if any suburban homes built after WW2 would have been heated by coal or oil - natural gas or electricity would have been the norm. But in the older parts of town, built in the 1890's-1920's, you'd probably still have coal-fired heat.
FWIW re lumber yards selling coal, I've heard it was often the other way around - coal (or heating oil) was a seasonal commodity, so they would sell lumber in the warmer weather when there was little call for coal or heating oil. Apparently true for some Midwestern grain elevators too.