In a couple of word - not very, although that's not to say it never happened.
Back in the day GN, for example, served on-line coal mines, as did UP, MILW, CB&Q, D&RGW, and ATSF. Some of these mines were captive operations, i.e. railroad-owned, while others were not. If you can find copies of the Keystone Coal Manual from the 1950s and 60s, you can look at the mine directories for the states in which you are interested. Not only are the mine properties described, the railroads that serve(d) them are listed as well. This will give you a good idea of who did what.
Hope this helps.
work safe
Coalminer3's comments are dead on.
This didn't happen because there was VERY little coal that crossed the Mississippi from east to west (or vice versa) by rail before the 1970s, except for southern Illinois coal moving to St. Louis. Further, railroads strove very hard to load nothing but their home-road cars at mines they served, with the small exception of some privately owned cars (which were pretty rare in coal service before the 1970s) and some seasonal events. Further, coal was all loose-car until the advent of unit-train coal (on the B&O) in 1958, and unit train moves even by the mid-1960s totalled about 60 nationwide. So there weren't strings of coal cars per se.
You could see some occasional foreign-road hoppers moving things like foundry coke traveling far off-line.
In the west, you would commonly see Utah Railway and Rio Grande drop-bottom gons delivering coal deep into UP, SP, and WP territory and occasionally up into NP and GN territory in the Far West, and UP drop-bottom gons and hoppers on WP and SP territory. Very little coal moved to California because it had a surfeit of fuel oil, except to Kaiser Steel and foundries. A lot of coal backhauled in ore boats to Duluth, Green Bay, Milwaukee, and Chicago, and moved by rail inland on NP, GN, MILW, CB&Q, C&NW, etc., in home-road cars.
Coal sources in the West that shipped heavy amounts by rail in the 1950s would be:
Wyoming, UP
Utah, D&RGW and URY
Colorado, D&RGW, C&S, and UP
Kansas, KCS, SLSF, and MP
Missouri, SLSF, MP
Arkansas, SLSF, KCS, MP
Montana, NP, MILW
Oklahoma, CRI&P, KCS, MKT
New Mexico, AT&SF
The typical coal move rarely exceeded 300 miles!
S. Hadid
1435mm wrote:Coal sources in the West that shipped heavy amounts by rail in the 1950s would be:<deleted list of many Western states...>
<deleted list of many Western states...>
bpickering wrote: 1435mm wrote: Coal sources in the West that shipped heavy amounts by rail in the 1950s would be: <deleted list of many Western states...> How about Washington/Oregon, esp. the Colombia River gorge? Thinking of doing UP along there....Brian Pickering
1435mm wrote: Coal sources in the West that shipped heavy amounts by rail in the 1950s would be: <deleted list of many Western states...>
Depends on era. Washington was a significant coal producer (Cle Elum, Centralia) in the early 1900s but by the 1940s its coal production was very low. A lot of D&RGW, UP, and URY originated coal moved into eastern Oregon and Washington for home heating and steam-generation at industrial customers such as sugar refineries, but as you approached the coast, fuel oil from California predominated as the heating and steam-generation fuel.
1435mm wrote:Depends on era. Washington was a significant coal producer (Cle Elum, Centralia) in the early 1900s but by the 1940s its coal production was very low. A lot of D&RGW, UP, and URY originated coal moved into eastern Oregon and Washington for home heating and steam-generation at industrial customers such as sugar refineries, but as you approached the coast, fuel oil from California predominated as the heating and steam-generation fuel.
I wonder if this is why Broadway Limited has a tendency to release ATSF steam locomotives with oil tenders? Prior to conversion to oil, where would the ATSF have obtained their coal?
roundhouse wrote: 1435mm wrote:Depends on era. Washington was a significant coal producer (Cle Elum, Centralia) in the early 1900s but by the 1940s its coal production was very low. A lot of D&RGW, UP, and URY originated coal moved into eastern Oregon and Washington for home heating and steam-generation at industrial customers such as sugar refineries, but as you approached the coast, fuel oil from California predominated as the heating and steam-generation fuel. I wonder if this is why Broadway Limited has a tendency to release ATSF steam locomotives with oil tenders? Prior to conversion to oil, where would the ATSF have obtained their coal?
Coal sources on Santa Fe included the Osage Field in Kansas and the Raton and Gallup Fields in New Mexico.
And central Illinois; never forget central Illinois, which was the location of the ATSF's charter line. The ATSF had several coaling stations through the state, and all the coal was local (off the C&IM, C&NW and Milwaukee)
Ray Breyer
Modeling the NKP's Peoria Division, circa 1943
WOW! Great stuff!
Just one problem...
I held off getting (coal) hoppers for my 80s just-west-of-Chicago model for ages figuring that boxcars, covered hoppers and tankcars would dominate... but then I stumbled on a pile of Bowser ATSF hoppers with unique numbers and a fairly late build date. I'm a sucker of strings of the same or very similar cars... so... how do I explain non-unit trains of hoppers?
Presumiably strings of the big coal gons coming out of the Powder River will be okay? (I hope)!
If they don't carry coal would they load or bakload aggregate for highway construction?
TIA
Dave-the-Train wrote: I held off getting (coal) hoppers for my 80s just-west-of-Chicago model for ages figuring that boxcars, covered hoppers and tankcars would dominate... but then I stumbled on a pile of Bowser ATSF hoppers with unique numbers and a fairly late build date. I'm a sucker of strings of the same or very similar cars... so... how do I explain non-unit trains of hoppers?
Hey, I'm having the same type of problem! I also like to see long strings of similar cars. So, I started buying Walthers 26' Ore Cars only to find out that they NEVER carried coal. Now, I want to find the right coal hoppers, but I can't use eastern roads! What's a guy to do?
Actually, the movement of eastern coal to the west coast was a little more active than most people think. True, it probably amounted to no more than ten cars a day total, but it still did happen often enough to notice. It's fun watching UP/SP/ATSF fans debate the frequency of N&W hoppers travelling over Raton or Donner!
Coal sources in the West that shipped heavy amounts by rail in the 1950s would be
This section is dead on. I've only got one comment though: watch your car types. We modeler tend to carry a LOT of incorrect baggage around with us regarding how "antique" railroading looked. We're so used to seeing long strings of black and brown hoppers crawling their way along the N&W and Pennsy that we tend to think that that's how coal was moved everywhere. NOT TRUE. Shockingly, before about 1955 most coal west of the Mississippi, and actually west of Indiana, moved by GONDOLA. Drop-bottom or "GS" (general service) gons, usually.
I've taken all the roads listed and given their appropriate numbers of gondolas and hoppers for 1950 below. I've added seven other western roads including the SP, WP, and GN:
UP: 4506 gons (3342 GS), 7929 hoppers
D&RGW: 5366 gons (4710 GS, all marked as "coal cars"), 0 hoppers
URY: 14 GS gons
C&S: 1332 gons (1312 GS), 298 hoppers
CB&Q (C&S parent): 9464 gons (7552 GS), 6624 hoppers
KCS: 570 gons (188 GS), 250 hoppers
SLSF: 5301 gons (392 GS), 4256 hoppers
MP (and affiliates): 7307 gons (2830 GS), 9204 hoppers
NP: 3815 gons (all GS), 1393 hoppers
MILW: 11,443 gons (10,958 GS), 3971 hoppers
CRI&P: 5636 gons (3729 GS), 831 hoppers
MKT: 1256 gons (63 GS), 800 hoppers
AT&SF: 11,464 gons (7714 GS), 3869 hoppers (about half side dumps for stone service)
SP/T&NO: 12,449 gons (9629 GS), 258 hoppers (only EIGHT are SP! They had lots of hoppers, but they were all Hart side dump ballast hoppers on their MOW rolls, and never hauled coal)
GN: 2891 gons (all GS), 449 hoppers (not including ore cars)
CGW: 10 gons (0 GS), 289 hoppers
M&StL: 252 gons (all GS), 587 hoppers
SSW: 50 gons (0 GS), 0 hoppers
T&P: 1246 gons (50 GS), 100 hoppers
WP: 1470 gons (all GS), 300 hoppers
So the "western" fleet of coal carrying cars seems to be made up of 60,911 GS gons (and 85,842 gons total) and 41,408 hoppers. So technically, western coal fleets on model railroads should be 59.5% gons and 39.5% hoppers.
Add to this 2,000 UCR (Utah Coal Route) drop-bottom gons, owned 50-50 by UP and Utah Railway.
Rio Grande also moved a lot of coal in boxcars as late as the Korean War. Most Colorado and Utah mines were equipped with box-car loading machinery. A lot of customers liked to get the high-priced lump coal in boxcars because they served as a theft-proof storage container both en-route and while the car was parked on their spur, finding it cheaper to pay the demurrage while the coal was slowly dispensed by the wagon- or truck-load than to build a storage facility and hire a guard to keep the coal from disappearing every night. Rio Grande liked it because it was a nice income source for per diem and demurrage.
The midwest coal roads, particularly the Illinois and Indiana coal roads (CB&Q, MILW) moved a lot of coal in hoppers because they had large industrial customers in Chicago and the other Great Lakes industrial cities. But the Far West coal roads, with the exception of UP, were almost pure drop-gon roads until the late 1950s.
Dave-the-Train wrote: WOW! Great stuff! Just one problem... I held off getting (coal) hoppers for my 80s just-west-of-Chicago model for ages figuring that boxcars, covered hoppers and tankcars would dominate... but then I stumbled on a pile of Bowser ATSF hoppers with unique numbers and a fairly late build date. I'm a sucker of strings of the same or very similar cars... so... how do I explain non-unit trains of hoppers? Presumiably strings of the big coal gons coming out of the Powder River will be okay? (I hope)! If they don't carry coal would they load or bakload aggregate for highway construction? TIA
Late 1980s -- there would be lots of utility coal moving in mostly steel cars, both rotary-dump gons and standard cross hoppers. You'd see a lot of private-owner cars, but as a rule, foreign-road cars are going to be scarce. That is, on BN you would see BN cars but not UP cars; on UP you would see UP cars but not BN cars, and so forth.
You can use a standard cross hopper for aggregate if you don't load it more than about 1/2 full. Gravel rarely moves very far by rail; there are a lot of 50-mile aggregate moves but almost none that travel further. Because you would have to clean the hopper both ways for a coal headhaul with an aggregate backhaul (power plants don't like stones in their coal-handling machinery and concrete doesn't like coal dust as an admixture), backhaul moves in a coal headhaul are quite rare except for commodities that move a long distance such as taconite pellets.
orsonroy wrote: Actually, the movement of eastern coal to the west coast was a little more active than most people think. True, it probably amounted to no more than ten cars a day total, but it still did happen often enough to notice. It's fun watching UP/SP/ATSF fans debate the frequency of N&W hoppers travelling over Raton or Donner! This section is dead on. I've only got one comment though: watch your car types. We modeler tend to carry a LOT of incorrect baggage around with us regarding how "antique" railroading looked. We're so used to seeing long strings of black and brown hoppers crawling their way along the N&W and Pennsy that we tend to think that that's how coal was moved everywhere. NOT TRUE. Shockingly, before about 1955 most coal west of the Mississippi, and actually west of Indiana, moved by GONDOLA. Drop-bottom or "GS" (general service) gons, usually.
I did a search for drop-bottom gons at Walthers, and there were only 4 in stock - all from different roads! Why is it that this type of gon is so hard to find? Wouldn't the GS gons have to be manually unloaded, namely by "shovel"?
roundhouse wrote: orsonroy wrote: Actually, the movement of eastern coal to the west coast was a little more active than most people think. True, it probably amounted to no more than ten cars a day total, but it still did happen often enough to notice. It's fun watching UP/SP/ATSF fans debate the frequency of N&W hoppers travelling over Raton or Donner! This section is dead on. I've only got one comment though: watch your car types. We modeler tend to carry a LOT of incorrect baggage around with us regarding how "antique" railroading looked. We're so used to seeing long strings of black and brown hoppers crawling their way along the N&W and Pennsy that we tend to think that that's how coal was moved everywhere. NOT TRUE. Shockingly, before about 1955 most coal west of the Mississippi, and actually west of Indiana, moved by GONDOLA. Drop-bottom or "GS" (general service) gons, usually. I did a search for drop-bottom gons at Walthers, and there were only 4 in stock - all from different roads! Why is it that this type of gon is so hard to find? Wouldn't the GS gons have to be manually unloaded, namely by "shovel"?
The GS gon was a drop-bottom gon. But back in those days unloading by shovel wasn't uncommon. Labor was cheap.
Model railroad manufacturers have rarely attempted the GS gon in plastic because the car is very complex. Details West makes an excellent kit of an SP prototype, which is both relatively expensive and difficult to build because there are so many little parts. It's a huge problem for those of us who want to model Rio Grande.
Shilshole wrote:Red Caboose offers/offered them in a variety of road names with at least three different ends, steel-sided and composite, with and without side extensions. They never seem to be in stock as kits, though...
Yes, the four I found in a search at Walthers were by Red Caboose, and they're not that cheap. Given they're four different road names, and the price, and I will probably stick with hoppers for now.
wjstix wrote:In "The Northern Pacific of McGee and Nixon" it's mentioned in one caption that virtually every freight train going west - stock train, reefers, whatever - would be filled out with gondolas of rosebud coal going east, mostly for on-line use by NP engines.
I'm confused... how does a westbound freight get filled out with coal going east?
1435mm wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: WOW! Great stuff! Just one problem... I held off getting (coal) hoppers for my 80s just-west-of-Chicago model for ages figuring that boxcars, covered hoppers and tankcars would dominate... but then I stumbled on a pile of Bowser ATSF hoppers with unique numbers and a fairly late build date. I'm a sucker of strings of the same or very similar cars... so... how do I explain non-unit trains of hoppers? Presumiably strings of the big coal gons coming out of the Powder River will be okay? (I hope)! If they don't carry coal would they load or bakload aggregate for highway construction? Also... what about stone outbound from a BIG roadstone quarry for interstate construction/maintenance? Most of it here in the UK is sent in block trains by rail to avoid the villages in the (limestone) hills being wrecked by an endless stream of trucks... it has kept more than one line open if only for freight. TIA Late 1980s -- there would be lots of utility coal moving in mostly steel cars, both rotary-dump gons and standard cross hoppers. You'd see a lot of private-owner cars, but as a rule, foreign-road cars are going to be scarce. That is, on BN you would see BN cars but not UP cars; on UP you would see UP cars but not BN cars, and so forth. You can use a standard cross hopper for aggregate if you don't load it more than about 1/2 full. Gravel rarely moves very far by rail; there are a lot of 50-mile aggregate moves but almost none that travel further. Because you would have to clean the hopper both ways for a coal headhaul with an aggregate backhaul (power plants don't like stones in their coal-handling machinery and concrete doesn't like coal dust as an admixture), backhaul moves in a coal headhaul are quite rare except for commodities that move a long distance such as taconite pellets. S. Hadid
Dave-the-Train wrote: WOW! Great stuff! Just one problem... I held off getting (coal) hoppers for my 80s just-west-of-Chicago model for ages figuring that boxcars, covered hoppers and tankcars would dominate... but then I stumbled on a pile of Bowser ATSF hoppers with unique numbers and a fairly late build date. I'm a sucker of strings of the same or very similar cars... so... how do I explain non-unit trains of hoppers? Presumiably strings of the big coal gons coming out of the Powder River will be okay? (I hope)! If they don't carry coal would they load or bakload aggregate for highway construction? Also... what about stone outbound from a BIG roadstone quarry for interstate construction/maintenance? Most of it here in the UK is sent in block trains by rail to avoid the villages in the (limestone) hills being wrecked by an endless stream of trucks... it has kept more than one line open if only for freight. TIA
Also... what about stone outbound from a BIG roadstone quarry for interstate construction/maintenance? Most of it here in the UK is sent in block trains by rail to avoid the villages in the (limestone) hills being wrecked by an endless stream of trucks... it has kept more than one line open if only for freight.
Hate to be awkward (no... I love being awkward really...) but what about on Chicago Rail Link and the J? Also, what about run throughs?
(I've had a heck of a job finding CNW Hoppers)!
Thanks for your help!
Dave-the-Train wrote: 1435mm wrote: Dave-the-Train wrote: WOW! Great stuff! Just one problem... I held off getting (coal) hoppers for my 80s just-west-of-Chicago model for ages figuring that boxcars, covered hoppers and tankcars would dominate... but then I stumbled on a pile of Bowser ATSF hoppers with unique numbers and a fairly late build date. I'm a sucker of strings of the same or very similar cars... so... how do I explain non-unit trains of hoppers? Presumiably strings of the big coal gons coming out of the Powder River will be okay? (I hope)! If they don't carry coal would they load or bakload aggregate for highway construction? Also... what about stone outbound from a BIG roadstone quarry for interstate construction/maintenance? Most of it here in the UK is sent in block trains by rail to avoid the villages in the (limestone) hills being wrecked by an endless stream of trucks... it has kept more than one line open if only for freight. TIA Late 1980s -- there would be lots of utility coal moving in mostly steel cars, both rotary-dump gons and standard cross hoppers. You'd see a lot of private-owner cars, but as a rule, foreign-road cars are going to be scarce. That is, on BN you would see BN cars but not UP cars; on UP you would see UP cars but not BN cars, and so forth. You can use a standard cross hopper for aggregate if you don't load it more than about 1/2 full. Gravel rarely moves very far by rail; there are a lot of 50-mile aggregate moves but almost none that travel further. Because you would have to clean the hopper both ways for a coal headhaul with an aggregate backhaul (power plants don't like stones in their coal-handling machinery and concrete doesn't like coal dust as an admixture), backhaul moves in a coal headhaul are quite rare except for commodities that move a long distance such as taconite pellets. S. Hadid Hate to be awkward (no... I love being awkward really...) but what about on Chicago Rail Link and the J? Also, what about run throughs? (I've had a heck of a job finding CNW Hoppers)! Thanks for your help!
What I'm getting at is that presumiably other Class 1 coal trains worked on the J and CRL... and BRC / maybe CHT to get round/into Chicago...? This would help solve my issue. Presumably other cities had the same thing happen?
Also I'm thinking in terms of run throughs, bridge traffic and last-leg-of-the-journey to access a power plant... with or without foriegn power on the point in the last case. (I notice that foriegn power on CNW had to be piloted by CNW locos equipt with cab signals where cab signalling was in force).
Put another way... How do I explain those lovley strings of someone else's coal hoppers? (Apart from the fact that in my world they run where I send them )
Thanks again
That's one of the nice things about interchange and transfer runs: you don't HAVE to know what those cars are doing there. So long as it's plausable it'll be fine. Remember, most cars on "antique" railroads were just passing through: there were so many roads that interchange and bridge routing was inevetable. So just run the cars you want from one staging yard to the other; if anyone asks about them, say it's bridge traffic "from her to there. My road just moves 'em."
I can't factually explain what a US Navy helium tank car is doing running between Peoria, IL and Frankfort, IN, but I've got three different photos and one bad order report that says that they did do so. I "suspect" that it was heading from California to Indiana to get refilled, but there are neither blimp pens nor helium refineries on my mainline. But I've got a helium tank car on my roster nonetheless, just because it really ran on my modeled line!
Examples like this are all over the place. What's a single SFRD reefer doing in a string of N&W hoppers in Virginia? What's one empty N&W hopper doing on Donner Pass? Nobody knows, but you can still model it!
orsonroy wrote: Examples like this are all over the place. What's a single SFRD reefer doing in a string of N&W hoppers in Virginia? What's one empty N&W hopper doing on Donner Pass? Nobody knows, but you can still model it!
With the difficulty in finding the correct equipment for every square foot of our model railroads, we're becoming too PC (prototypically correct, that is), and it can be discouraging. Your post is exactly what I needed, and I hope that folks who have yet to take the plunge into model railroading will accept this as fact, and embrace the hobby!