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I think low-sulfur coal is a non-issue here. Low-sulfur coal was broadly available when the UP tried its coal turbine. What was uncommon was sulfur dioxide emissions regulations, until the Clean Air Act of 1970. As early as the 1920s, according to Coal Age, low-sulfur coal was almost universal in metallurgical and industrial uses, and where economically possible, everyone preferred low-sulfur coal even for stove and stoker fuel. Most of the coal mined on the N&W, C&O, B&O, PRR, etc., in the steam era was low-sulfur coal. Now it's mostly mined out. UP's own coal mines in Southern Wyoming, in the Hanna and Hams Fork basins, produce low-sulfur coal. Hanna coal is higher in BTUs than Powder River Basin coal (I suspect PRB coal is what you're thinking about) but is more costly to mine because of a higher stripping ratio and undesirable geology. If you recall, in the late 1970s UP shipped a lot of utility coal east from the Hanna Basin, over Sherman Hill, and a lot west, too. But then the PRB came on line and the Hanna mines closed. This is a total digression here, but the coal resources of the PRB were mapped and understood by the 1920s. But it was low-BTU, high-moisture content, high-ash content coal, located a long, long way away from population centers, so no one bothered to mine it in quantity until the 1970s. Five factors led to its exploitation: (1) clean air legislation; (2) greatly lowered rail haulage costs; (3) depletion of cheaply recoverable reserves closer to population centers; (4) a population shift from the Northeast to the South and West, and (5), an explosion of demand for electricity to power air conditioners, irrigation pumps, etc. I presume (without digging into the files) that UP was burning either Hanna or Kemmerer coal in the coal turbine. I can't imagine them buying coal produced on the D&RGW or Utah Railway for this project, but who knows? I suspect the ash content of the coal was the major factor in blade erosion. But I don't know -- maybe coal is just too abrasive, period. Maybe even zero-ash, zero-sulfur coal would erode turbine blades at an unacceptable rate.
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