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Wood vs. Coal for Fueling Steam Engines
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Whoa, there, WR! I wouldn't dispute your belief that there were more miles of rail underground in Pennsylvania and West Virginia than above -- there were a LOT of mines, and all the big ones used rail haulage. But don't dismiss the West quite so fast! There was a lot of coal mined on the prairie. Not even including the immense coal deposits of central and southern Illinois. Kansas was a very large coal producer -- if you've ever heard of a McNally-Pittsburg tipple, you might know that the Pittsburg is Pittsburg, Kansas. The whole territory in southeastern Kansas was heavily stripped. Iowa had coal mines. Oklahoma mines coal to this day. Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas are all coal-mining states, though in Texas it's mostly lignite. Going further west, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Washington, Arizona, Wyoming, and Montana were all major coal producers at a very early date. Agreed, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, and California have virtually no coal. Colorado has coal seams that were profitably extracted practically everywhere a railroad went, then and now. More than half of Colorado is underlain with coal that has been or still is mined at numerous locations. <br /> <br />I think you are thinking of Powder River Basin coal when you say sub-bituminous. No railroad other than Northern Pacific burned that low-grade stuff, and in its case, not until the 1920s when it began strip-mining at Rosebud, Montana. The UP coal at Carbon, Hanna, Rock Springs, Kemmerer, etc., is all bituminous, in the 10,500-12,500 range.
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