How did the coal business work before unit trains?

[carl425]

In trying to plan out my operational scenarios I'm begining to realize how much I don't know.

Here's what I think I know.  Please correct/clarify me as required.

• A loader operator would call somebody (who?) and ask to have loads picked up and empties dropped off.
• The railroad would schedule a mine run out of the "local" yard with empties for everybody along the line and they would pick up the loads and bring them back to the yard.
• Loads from multiple mine runs would be assembled into trains and forwarded to a "main" yard down the line.
• Empties would be assembled into a train at the "main" yard and sent down to the local yard.

Here's where I get fuzzy...

• At what point in the process does an actual car number get assigned? I can imagine a scenario where the hoppers are as much a commodity as the coal itself and which specific car goes where doesn't matter as long as everybody gets 2,500 tons of lump/egg... or whatever type was ordered.
• I've seen pictures of rail yards full of loaded hoppers where it appears that each track is a different size.  Is this how inventory was managed?
• I is it true that the rail yards are used kinda like a coal warehouse where suppliers fill the yards and orders are filled out of the yards?

Thanks for whatever clarity y'all can provide.

[JOHN BRUCE III]

I think there are several answers to this question, depending on era and the industry the coal is going to. During the era pre-WWI, many railroads owned or were owned by coal companies. Typically coal going to the home heating industry was mined in Pennsylvania and shipped to storage depots in New Jersey, where it was unloaded and put in piles, then reloaded into railcars for wintertime distribution. So that's one answer.

Second, a car moves based on a waybill. I don't believe a car normally moves without one.This means even as an empty, it is identified by number and moves via an empty-car waybill.

A loaded car normally has a shipper and consignee. There may be some built-in delay in its movement (e.g., via a circuitous route), but I don't believe it ever just sits with a load unassigned. The "warehouse" would be the coal storage piles c 1900 in places like New Jersey, but the coal is unloaded from a car there and eventually reloaded.

As far as I can see, photos of rail yards full of loaded coal cars basically represent a snapshot of the classification process. Every car in view has a destination and will presumably be classified and taken out within a fairly short period.

[JOHN BRUCE III]

Here are a couple more thoughts. A single loaded car travels via a waybill to its destination -- steel mill, power plant, coal pier, retail distributor, whatever. When unloaded, it's taken to a yard where it is classified for return as an empty via an empty car waybill. Exactly where the empty is sent depends on the location, the railroad, the yard, the season, whatever. It eventually returns to a local yard in the coal mining region.

When the mine needs an empty  car/s, it calls the local agent, or some equivalent, who orders the car, and it goes to the mine for loading via an empty-car waybill.

[ACY Tom]

Two more factors to consider: What are the needs of the customer; and the cleaning and separation of the coal into grades (sizes).

Stoker coal tended to be a smaller size than lumps or blocks.  For home heating, some households would economize by buying the larger sizes, or run-of-mine sizes, and breaking it up themselves.  Often, railroads (even the major roads) would take run-of-mine directly into the tender from a mine tipple.  I recall a story in Railfan Magazine, which told of a B&O articulated loco that suffered a stoker failure due to a mine roof bolt being wedged in the stoker screw.  This coal had obviously not been cleaned and graded.  On the other hand, some roads used cleaned and graded coal, and had nice, evenly sized coal lumps in the tender.  In the early 1960's, I visited the Buffalo Creek & Gauley and was told their steam locos used cleaned and graded coal in "nut" and "egg" sizes. 

In some cases, a small mine might not have cleaning and grading facilities.  This coal either went to customers who chose to do the sorting themselves or, more often, the run-of-mine coal was loaded into hoppers and sent to another larger mine where the coal was put through the cleaning and grading process. 

For home heating, many small dealers couldn't handle large quanties of each size.  Twin hoppers in the 50-55 ton range were often preferred for this.  Thus a coal dealer might receive a carload of one size, plus another carload of another.  Large users like power plants often preferred larger 70 ton cars because 10 70 ton cars could hold as much as 14 50 tonners.

Tom

[gregc]

I've read about the Philadelphia & Reading, which started as a coal company which built a railroad.

Anthracite mines in Pa. are large, so I would think that many cars are swapped out at the collieries possibly after each shift.   The P&R owns the mines and the RR.

these cars are brought to breakers which sort and possibly wash the coal.

a large yard, St Clair, up in mine country supports these operations.  Trains orignate from it for steel mills in Bethlehem and destinations in Philly and NJ.   At least one destination in Philly is the Reading Marine terminal.  (later there was a Marine terminal in NJ  I assume smaller yards in Philly and NJ for shipments to local coal companies for heating.

I assume all empties are put into trains destined for the yards in mine country (e.g. St Clair) and then distributed to the mines.

 

[dehusman]

carl425

 

Here's what I think I know. Please correct/clarify me as required.

 

•A loader operator would call somebody (who?) and ask to have loads picked up and empties dropped off.

 

 

A person who sells or uses large quantities of coal decides on how much coal they want to burn next month. They put in an order with the coal mining or brokerage company. The coal company gives the mine the orders on how much coal they expect to sell so the mine knows how much coal to mine and then gives the railroad an estimate of how many empty cars they will be needing to load.

 

On a daily or weekly basis the mine would then give local agent or yardmaster an estimate of how many cars they would need to load. If the railroad has LOTS of cars they will keep the mine full of empties, if the railroad is tight on cars they will give them what they need. The mine might also order specific cars (only twins, only gons, only triples, etc). The yardmaster or agent would arrange for the appropriate number of empties (if available) to be brought to the mine. There are two parts there. The long range forecast drives empties to the yard the agent or yardmaster gets cars from and the daily demand sets the specific number of empties moved from the yard to the mine.

 

On the loaded side the mine loads the coal into the cars depending on its loading plan. Modern coal is pretty much mine run or at least crushed down to a maximum size. Pre-1960's coal came in several different sizes and was screened, sorted and loaded by size. A car of pea coal would be different from a car of lump coal and were not interchangeable. As the cars were loaded the mine would create a bill of lading with the car number and shipment info. That would be given to the railroad and they would create a waybill.

 

The mine would tell the train crews which cars had been loaded, each car would be an individual shipment, each with its own destination. You could pull 100 cars out of a mine and they could be single shipments to 100 different places or they could be 100 shipments to one place. Sometimes the coal from smaller mines would be raw/mine coal that would be taken to a larger mine or "breaker", where it would be unloaded, sorted or crushed to size and reloaded as the correct size for the orders.

 

Once the cars got to the yard they would be treated and switched just like any other car. Certain roads had particular moves that might result in multiple cars going to the same location. A road that served a lot of power plants might deal more in larger sizes of coal and might have full trains for one location, same with steel mills or export docks.

 

Depending on the road, where the detail switching was done, depended on where the coal was going. Some roads had more switching than others. The soft coal roads tended to serve more docks, steel mills and power plants, so they tended to have more cars going to the same place. The hard coal roads had more retail business so their coal was scattered a little more.

 

 

•At what point in the process does an actual car number get assigned? I can imagine a scenario where the hoppers are as much a commodity as the coal itself and which specific car goes where doesn't matter as long as everybody gets 2,500 tons of lump/egg... or whatever type was ordered.

 

 

When the car is loaded the waybill is made. At any point after than the shipment can be reconsigned or diverted to a new destination. People get confused a lot and think the RAILROAD owns the coal. They don't (well they sorta did before the government passed the anti-trust laws), the coal company owns the coal and they direct the railroad where to take it. Customers using coal don't order coal from the railroad, they order coal from a coal company and coal company has the railroad haul the coal from the mine to the customer.

 

 

•I've seen pictures of rail yards full of loaded hoppers where it appears that each track is a different size. Is this how inventory was managed?

 

•I is it true that the rail yards are used kinda like a coal warehouse where suppliers fill the yards and orders are filled out of the yards?

 

 

In the way I think you mean it no, the coal is loaded by one size per track, so all the cars passing under one chute in the breaker tipple will have the same size coal in it. If the outbound track at the tipple holds 30 cars then you can get a string of 30 cars, all with the same size coal in it. If the coal is hauled someplace else to be switched, then the coal will stay together in one size until it gets there.

 

Yes there was a little storage in transit, but in most cases the there wasn't long term storage in the cars, the railroads couldn't afford to have their cars stopped for months. It would not be uncommon for a couple days or two, here an there. One thing that also isn't well known is that coal trains back then weren't fixed size, they would get bigger or smaller depending on the grades the train had to go over. The conductor's labor agreement provided that a coal train could "adjust tonnage" up to five time between St. Clair and Port Richmond (Philadephia)

 

Dave H.

 

 

[carl425]

Thanks Dave for the excellent tutorial.

[doctorwayne]

Thanks, too, from me, Dave.

I'm modelling the delivery of coal to a small power plant, but not the mine or the power plant, so it's simply loads northbound and empties returning.
I'm also modelling several coal dealers' yards, and a couple of industries big enough to require their own coal delivery, too, so your information is much appreciated.

Wayne

[Anonymous]

I'll go ahead and drop in a plug here for Tony Koester's article in the Feb 1997 issue of MR, which will probably say all the things dave said.  Also there is an article in Trains magazine written by David P Morgan in the April 1956 magazine entitled "Tide 470", which is about coal movement for export.  You might also try your prototype railroad's historical society for information about how it moved coal in the time period you are modeling and where it was moved. 

 

I will go out on a limb here and say: https://www.nwhs.org/index.php, based on your profile picture.

[wjstix]

carl425

is it true that the rail yards are used kinda like a coal warehouse where suppliers fill the yards and orders are filled out of the yards?

No, they weren't. A yardmaster was judged by how empty his yard was. The goal was to get the cars in, make up a train, and get them out. The ideal was the "just in time" method: get the empty cars to the coal company just when they're needed so they can load them, and get them to the power plant etc. just as they're running low on coal (although I'm sure in many situations a company using a lot of coal would have some type of stockpile.)

[BRAKIE]

wjstix

The ideal was the "just in time" method: get the empty cars to the coal company just when they're needed so they can load them, and get them to the power plant etc. just as they're running low on coal (although I'm sure in many situations a company using a lot of coal would have some type of stockpile.)

The same can apply to lake coal..They stock pile coal for the Laker before it arrives..I can tell when they are going to load a Laker at Sandusky..There's a unusual amount of loaded coal trains bound for Sandusky.