First I must give tribute to two other Coal Belt line railroads bearing the name Coal Belt: Bill Henderson and his beautiful Coal Belt railroad set in Pennsylvania in the mid-1900's prior to World War I; and Jay Ramsey whose layout is set in the real life Hazard County in Kentucky. Mine is set in Pennsylvania in the 1980's in the anthracite regions of Lehighton area north through White Haven with off-line terminus in Scranton, Pa. on the north end and Allentown, Pa as my main staging yard on the south.
I've used for more practical purposes local town and city names from Pennsylvania, in the beginning I used a Pennsylvania highway map to find correct names (this was all before internet) but had to do some serious changing of geographic locations. For example: Porterville represents some of the big anthracite mining towns.
My era is between the demise of Penn-Central and the startup of Conrail between 1976 and 1985. The theme behind the Coal Belt Lines is a product of customer frustration with the service. The several coal mine owners and corporate boards disgusted with the service they've put up with decided they could do better themselves. Long story short. about came the Coal Belt Lines (CBL) filling a serious service gap.
The layout fills the basement: roughly 600 square feet. It's 26th birthday was this past Memorial Day weekend. The bulk of the motive power is EMD diesels, the token Alcos, and some GE units. # # #