50-60 years ago, when coal was used for heating homes and fueling factories, it was a big share of the railroads' traffic. Did the railroads do any of the marketing and selling of heating coal, or were they just the transportation component from mine to coal seller?
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Fifty years ago was 1960. By that time, railroads were mostly out of the operation of coal mines and retailing of coal, though several railroads, notably UP, still owned considerable coal lands.
1930 might be a better date for your question. In that time period, railroads were very much in the business of mining and selling coal. (The Hepburn Act that was intended to separate railroads from the ownership, extraction, and marketing of the commodities they carried was never enforced to the extent Congress envisioned. The Act was particularly targeted at the anthracite roads, and to an extent those companies did have to relinquish their prior practice that charged a very high rate to move coal, thus making its own mines operate at a loss on paper and making up the loss on the transportation charges, which tended to force the independent mines out of the market or to sell out to the railroad coal company). In that era there were very few major railroads that did not own a major coal mining and marketing company that produced for the domestic heating and commercial heating and/or met coal market. In some cases it was difficult to tell which was really the parent company, the coal company or the railroad, particularly in the case of the anthracite roads, and whether the core business was mining and railroads a sideline or vertical integration tool, or the other way around. The N&W notably was really a coal lands development company that owned a railroad, at least in the latter 1800s and early 1900s.
Oops! I had a a little math/brain glitch there. I meant to say more like 60-70 years ago, thinking that the use of coal for heating dropped off precipitously after WW II. Glad to see you back!What about the railroads that weren't hauling anthracite coal, for example, the Grainger lines. Did they own and operate mines ?
I'm just avoiding work this weekend, and since you're simply asking a historical question and the thread hasn't yet diverted into a political screechfest, I'm willing to read it.
It's hard to think of a coal-burning Class 1 railroad that did NOT operate a coal mining company at one time or another. Milwaukee Road and Northern Pacific were major operators; Santa Fe was in the early days but as it converted its western lines to oil it exited the business. Rock Island, Burlington, North Western, and Illinois Central all operated mines at one time.
Also, virtually all of these railroad-owned coal companies sold into the retail and commercial heating market simultaneously, principally because railroads tended to use cheaper grades of coal whereas the heating market demanded the better grades of coal that a mine would produce simultaneously. It was certainly possible to operate a mine to produce nothing but cheap railway fuel, and some did particularly the opencast operations such as NP's Rosebud Mine, but for most mines, if the mine was operated in order to produce high-value heating coal as a primary product, and low-value railway fuel asa byproduct, the profitability of the mine was much higher. In other words, railways for the most part operated their mines in a fashion that used commercial and retail sales to subsize the purchase of their own fuel.
As a rule of thumb, railroads that took at-risk positions in coal property or operations tended to fall into the following reasons for doing so:
RWM
Railway Man [snip] It's hard to think of a coal-burning Class 1 railroad that did NOT operate a coal mining company at one time or another. [snip]
As usual, I'll submit the exception that proves the rule, just because it's interesting: PRR, as far as I know, never got involved in the coal business other than purely as a transportation company - at least not in its "Lines East" region - until maybe the 1950's or so when diversification and acquisitions may have added something of that kind. Nor was there a coal company anywhere else in the structure of the company and its affiliates.
Likewise, I'm not aware that the Lehigh Valley Railroad ever had an affiliated coal mining operation. Asa Packer seemed to be well-off enough by merely hauling what others produced to the eastern city markets. The Lehigh & New England RR was a comparative late-comer to the Pennsylvania coal fields, and also was mostly a hauler, not a producer. And the Erie RR seemed to avoid all of the coal-mining areas, at least through NY and PA.
On the other hand, the Central RR of New Jersey bought the railroad subsidiary - the Lehigh & Susquehanna RR - of the Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co., the first coal mining company in eastern PA; after that, there wasn't common ownership.
As RWM suggests, the relationship between each major coal-hauling railroad and its coal company - i.e., which was the 'dog' and which was the 'tail' that was wagged by the other one - may have morphed over time as the primacy and profitability of each business waxed and waned with respect to each other. Broadly and generally, the fortunes of the coal-hauling railroads and the coal mining companies in the Eastern US were pretty much parallel from about 1850 until about 1950. But around the latter date, the home and commercial heating markets turned to oil and natural gas as substitutes, and only those railroads that hauled coal which was used for steel mills, power plants, or export, etc. continued to make much money from it. As a result, the L&NE saw the handwriting on the wall, and voluntarily shut down near the end of 1961 before the losses got too large, and then liquidated, yielding a net return to its owners. The others - such as the D&H - realized that if they were to have a future, it would be in hauling something else, such as all the other freight. But for most of them, that didn't turn out too well - they wound up being part of ConRail.
- Paul North.
According to Railway Age, Coal Age, and the ICC in the 1900-1910 period, the PRR owned the Susquehanna Coal Company, a major anthracite producer, plus some more minor companies. PRR disposed of its holdings in this company in 1917. LV and Erie also owned stock in coal mining companies.
Coal Age listed some of the entanglements in 1908 after passage of the Hepburn Act:
The most entangled was of course the DL&W, an arrangement that was a target of the Hepburn Act.
RWM--I cannot, to this day, see the name "Susquehanna" without involuntarily replaying Abbot and Costello doing the "Susquehanna Hat Company" routine. Funny how things stick in the mind, or what is left of it.
Railway Man 1930 might be a better date for your question. In that time period, railroads were very much in the business of mining and selling coal.
1930 might be a better date for your question. In that time period, railroads were very much in the business of mining and selling coal.
Especially for retail sales of coal for home heating. The move away from coal for heating started maybe a decade or so earlier, one of the recurring editorial themes of Popular Science Monthly ca 1930 (see Google Books) was the advantages of automatic heat provided by oil burners. As mentioned elsewhere in this thread, the trend away from coal really took off after WW2, which explains what happened to the East Broad Top and NYO&W in the late 40's and early 50's.
Good to see that you're still around - and I don't blame you for not wanting to get involved in political shoutfests...
- Erik
RWM, thanks for that informative correction - and the research and general knowledge that supports it - as always. I had never read or heard of the Susquehanna Coal Co., nor PRR's involvement with it, before this. I'm not terribly interested in century-old history, but I'll keep an eye out for that in my future readings. That PRR saw fit to divest itself of that ownership as early as 1917 - long before the general downturn of the coal industry was apparent - may have been merely pursuant to the strictures of Hepburn Act, and/ or says to me that the modern PRR management saw no benefit from keeping an interest in that line of business.
Interestingly, the PRR did not have an extensive network of lines in the anthracite coal regions, as compared to the Reading, Lehigh Valley, CNJ, L&NE, DL&W, D&H, or the O&W, etc. The most expansive was at the western end, which originated from Sunbury/ Northumberland at the confluence of the North and West branches of the Susquehanna River, which is about 60 miles north of Harrisburg, the state capital. From there, a minor network went about 10 -15 miles east to Shamokin and a few of the surrounding towns, such as Paxinos. Some of those lines - particularly the latter one - have been resurrected and revived to serve new businesses, such as 'activated charcoal' producers and at least one plastics company. It's kind of odd to be working with a weed-grown, out-of-service track that's laid with 152 lb. PRR section rail . . . The Schuylkill Valley branch followed the river of that same name as far as Pottsville, but that was about it. Finally, the Wilkes-Barre branch to Buttonwood Yard went up the North Branch of the Susquehanna, paralleling a DL&W branch, but there was no coal on-line until it reached the Wyoming Valley = Scranton, Wilkes-Barre, and the surrounding towns.
As RWM also noted, the Reading was the archtype of an interlocked coal company and railroad - I thought about mentioning it in last night's post, but decided against it because everyone knows about that, right ? Well, maybe not, so here it is.
Lastly, a minor correction - the Lehigh & Susquehanna was long-term leased to the CNJ, not sold.
That leads to another observation and inquiry, based on RWM's list above: it would be interesting to see what the amounts/ percentages of ownership there were between the coal companies and railroads, both ways - i.e., what percentage of Coal Company A is owned by Railroad B, and what percentage that ownership was of Railroad B's value - and how that varied over time; conversely, the percentage of Railroad D that was owned by Coal Company C, adn what percentage that was of its value. I won't presume that the publications referenced by RWM or the government would have been concerned with a railroad that had only a 1% ownership of a coal company, and/ or that comprised as little as 1% of the railroad's value - but what was the threshold of interest and concern - 10% ? 30% ? 51% ? and so on. But to answer that would take more research than I would want anyone - including myself - to engage in, without a clear benefit or purpose such as a thesis paper, etc.
The railroads initially developed coal mines to supply fuel for their engines. When the realized they had excess mining capacity they started selling coal to third parties. The one major exception, which was mentioned above, was the N&W. They had the Pocohontas Land company (they still own it) which they developed or in later years leased out the mineral rights to coal operators. Again, as mentioned above, some coal companies built captive railroads to haul their product to market. Without a transportation means the product is of no value. Think of the gas reserves in Prudhoe Bay. Lots of gas but no pipeline to get it to the lower 48. A few of the railroads were slow in converting to diesel. This was not out of lack for capital but the worry about alienating their best customers, the coal companies, by switching from coal to oil. Both the PRR and N&W fit into this category.
Trust busting in the late 19th and early 20th centuries ended mine to retail monopolies on the coal-railroad industries as the so called Anthracite roads had to divest themselves of their coal interests. And though the railroads no longer "owned" the coal companies, the coal companies continued the use of the railroad brand names of "D&H Anthracite", "Lackawanna Blue Coal", and the like up to very lately. BIggest coal downturn began in the 20's and by 1955 oil was home heating choice and was gbeing challenged by gas, both natural and "bottled". Best reviews of this history is found in the histories of these railroads: DL&W, Erie, LV, RDG, CNJ, NYO&W, PRR, D&H, in particular but general eastern railroad histories in general. N&W, Virginian, B&O, C&O, L&N all come to mind, too. Remanant of these coal companies still exits in some form or another.
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ccltrains A few of the railroads were slow in converting to diesel. This was not out of lack for capital but the worry about alienating their best customers, the coal companies, by switching from coal to oil. Both the PRR and N&W fit into this category.
A few of the railroads were slow in converting to diesel. This was not out of lack for capital but the worry about alienating their best customers, the coal companies, by switching from coal to oil. Both the PRR and N&W fit into this category.
Since we have a coal thread, I have decided to at last share with you what an old M&O (and then GM&O) operator in Gordo, Alabama, told me about a particular coal shipment from an on-line mine. Another operator sent the description of the shipment of two cars of Red Ash Coal to the dispatcher, but somehow dropped the fourth dot from the last letter of Ash, and ran the last two letters for Coal together, making one letter of them. (He first explained to me, who was not fully familiar with the code, what the results of the errors were; I knew one, but not the other.) Another operator, hearing the message asked, "Who cares about the color of the cows' rear end?"
Now, back to serious discussion.
Johnny
Murphy Siding ccltrains: A few of the railroads were slow in converting to diesel. This was not out of lack for capital but the worry about alienating their best customers, the coal companies, by switching from coal to oil. Both the PRR and N&W fit into this category. I've read that before, but I wonder about a hole in the logic. If the railroad alienated their coal mine customer, what was the customer going to do? Stop shipping coal?
ccltrains: A few of the railroads were slow in converting to diesel. This was not out of lack for capital but the worry about alienating their best customers, the coal companies, by switching from coal to oil. Both the PRR and N&W fit into this category.
I've read that before, but I wonder about a hole in the logic. If the railroad alienated their coal mine customer, what was the customer going to do? Stop shipping coal?
There is no mention or hint of any such policy, idea, or plan on the part of either the coal companies or the railroads, in any of the trade press of the era. Coal Age spent plenty of ink lambasting railroads in the 1950s so it seems odd they would have failed to mention this. This concept does get mentioned in railfan magazines and books, but without attribution. It may be true, but since I know of no evidence to support this assertion, I have no way of knowing.
Murphy Siding-
I have heard the comment about being worried about alienating their shippers, but cannot verify it by railroad records. The railroads would not want to make such a policy public for PR reasons. As to other sources of rail shipping PRR had competition from B&O, WM, Erie, and others. Yes some of these had converted to diesel but we all, including corporations, do stupid things out of spite. The N&W had competition from the Virginian prior to N&W swallowing them up. The Virginian had large sections of their line electrified so there was no argument about loosing sales. The electric was probably coal generated so the coal companies provided fuell to the Virginian by a round about way. I think that at the time of the switch to diesel the N&W was controlled by PRR and the PRR's unwritten policy could have filtered down.
It is interesting to note that in the Conrail breakup the child (N&W) ended up owning the parent (PRR).
On a slightly different bent to coal shipping, during the early '50s residences in our area (northern panhandle of WV) were converting to gas for heating. Prior to 1950 we had a coal furnace with the coal being trucked to our home directly from the mine. Being in a coal area local coal was delivered directly by truck. In 1950 I was informed that since I was 10 I would have the job of hauling the ashes from our coal furnace in the basement out to the garbage can. The happiest day in my life was when we got the gas furnace during the summer of 1950 and the ash hauling job disappeared. The only draw back from converting to gas was we did not have ashes to put on the ice and snow in the alley.
Railway Man According to Railway Age, Coal Age, and the ICC in the 1900-1910 period, the PRR owned the Susquehanna Coal Company, a major anthracite producer, plus some more minor companies. PRR disposed of its holdings in this company in 1917. [snip]
One further thought on this: That ownership by PRR would have been strictly for the sale of the coal, not for use as locomotive fuel - I believe the PRR never had a significant fleet of steam locomotives that burned anthracite. In the NorthEastern US, those kinds of locomotives typically had the Wooten wide-fireboxes, which often evolved into the 'Camelback' or 'Mother Hubbard' designs with the cab for the engineer (only) on top of the middle of the boiler, and the fireman in another partially open-cab at the backhead. The roads which rostered those almost mirrors the NorthEastern roads in RWM's list above. But that's a whole 'nother topic . . .
I, too, lived in a neighborhood where the sounds of coal sliding down chutes into basement coal bins were heard whenever neighbors replenished their store of "Blue Coal Anthracite." We were too poor, however, and our house lacked central heating. Oil-wick-fired kitchen stoves and portable kerosene heaters were our sources of heat. Bricks would be heated in the oven, then wrapped in towels to take to bed with us. But just like clltrains did, my neighborhood buddies had the shake-the-grate and haul-out-the-ashes duty, depsoiting ashes in what we all called "ash cans." I still often forget, and call a garbage can an ash can.
Until I went off to college, the only central heat that I knew was at school, which had coal-burning furnaces. At home, we had coal and wood stoves and kerosene heaters--and I carried all the fuels in, and took the ashes out. At my grandparents' house, my grandmother put the ashes out by the fig bushes, and there ws always a good crop of figs.
In college, we had steam heat, provided by coal-burning furnaces. In the fall of my first year, I was given the task of going around every night to make certain that there was enough coal in each stoker and that two of the four boilers had enough water in them (the other two had automatic valves). My second year, I also had to go around Sunday mornings to tend to everything--including cleaning the fires.
I had other work after that second year, but one night during my last semester, the dormitory president came rushing up to my room to tell me that a steam pipe had burst in the basement. The problem was not a burst pipe , but a water leak from an overhead radiator in the basement (nobody noticed a little steam escaping, but when hot water began dripping...). The problem was that the boy who then had charge had opened the water inlet valve and g=forgot to close it after he had bailed coal into the stoker. I closed that valve and opened an inch and a half valve to let the water out of the system--and closed it an hour later. Later, I told the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds that he owed me for an hour; he laughed at me.
The worst part of the coal work came when the bins were filled in the summer; a truck would come in from the mine (about 50 miles away), the driver would throw the coal into the bin, and two students who were working on the Ground Crew would be inside, throwing the coal to the far side of the bin. It was particularly bothersome in the men's dormitory coal bin, for the 500? gallon hot water tank was in the coal bin. Two of the boys had the not-so-bright idea of spraying the tank with cold water--which was promptly heated and filled the air with water vapor.
While we are waxing nostalgic, let me tell you how Old King Coal influenced my entry into the world of model railroading. In the early 1950s, when I had reached an age to have my first Lionel train set, my Dad took me to the local department store to pick out my Christmas present.
My eyes lit up at the sight of the Santa Fe Super Chief flying around the display and I looked at my Dad. He looked back down at me and said, "Son, you need to get a set with a steam engine pulling it. Steam is what pays my check." You see, my Dad was a coal miner.
So....I got a steam train set. I probably pouted, but my Dad and I had time together as he got out his coping saw and built a mine tipple and crossing cross-bucks.
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