I saw a train come through Nashville’s Kayne Avenue Yard today that had one, and only one, hopper load of coal. The rest of the train was made up of autoracks plus a few various other car types. My question is: who in this day and time would be the consignee for just one hopper load of coal?
Maybe it was set out bad order, and is now being forwarded on the next available train....
Jim
Modeling BNSF and Milwaukee Road in SW Wisconsin
It's most likely chasing after 109 of its buddies.
You'd be surprised. There may be some folks in the Nashville area still using coal for fuel, for home heating for example. Hard to believe in this day and age but several years ago I saw a coal truck heading up Main Street here in Richmond VA. When I expressed my surprise to a co-worker who was a local he told me there were quite a few houses in the older parts of town that still had their coal furnaces.
Just remembered, I stopped at a convienience store in Hopewell Va a few years after that and they were selling bagged coal there. COAL, not charcoal, I double-checked.
So maybe that coal car was on its way to a local fuel dealer?
I see one or two cars in one of our manifests quite often. IIRC, it's going to a steel mini-mill.
Jeff
Matters what KIND of hopper it was -- what were the reporting marks and car number? Might also be helpful to know which direction it was going...
Keep in mind that some large institutions use coal for heating. The college I went to had a central boiler that burned coal.
Modeling the Cleveland and Pittsburgh during the PennCentral era starting on the Cleveland lakefront and ending in Mingo junction
Remember the article in Trains a month or so ago about the coal for tourist RR steam locomotives ? They're not going to buy a trainload at a time . . . maybe 2 - 3 cars at most ?
- Paul North.
Jeff, I think I see the same coal cars you do...it's anthracite, no less, carried in RBMN hoppers (am I right?). We used to send them to Council Bluffs for further classification, so they're not likely to be going anywhere west of North Platte. Usually they come in pairs, but never more than three at a time. One would not be out of the realm of possibility.
Carl
Railroader Emeritus (practiced railroading for 46 years--and in 2010 I finally got it right!)
CAACSCOCOM--I don't want to behave improperly, so I just won't behave at all. (SM)
Those RBMN hoppers go farther than you might think—I've seen them this winter and spring in El Centro, Calif., in the Imperial Valley. Not sure if they are going to the sugar beet plant at Carlton (north of El Centro), or if they go across the border at Calexico.
Kurt Hayek
We have a foundry in town that takes single hoppers of coke.
CShaveRR Jeff, I think I see the same coal cars you do...it's anthracite, no less, carried in RBMN hoppers (am I right?). We used to send them to Council Bluffs for further classification, so they're not likely to be going anywhere west of North Platte. Usually they come in pairs, but never more than three at a time. One would not be out of the realm of possibility.
They may be going to Nucor at Norfolk, NE.
"No soup for you!" - Yev Kassem (from Seinfeld)
Let's not forget all the pizza places in the NE that sceam we use coal fired ovens to bake our pizzas they have to get it from someplace also.
Some of the RBMN hoppers are going to manufacturers of titanium dioxide.
Dave H. Painted side goes up. My website : wnbranch.com
I've seen a single coal hopper a number of times headed into Conway Yard on NS Fort Wayne Line. I also see 2 or 3 RBMN cars frequently, Often enough that I always assumed they had a dedicated customer somewhere west of Pittsburgh. But then, we all know that assuming something can end up biting one in the back side.
Tom
Pittsburgh, PA
RME,
It was a regular CSX blue hopper car. I am pretty sure it was headed north, either to Louisville or Evansville.
ericsp CShaveRR Jeff, I think I see the same coal cars you do...it's anthracite, no less, carried in RBMN hoppers (am I right?). We used to send them to Council Bluffs for further classification, so they're not likely to be going anywhere west of North Platte. Usually they come in pairs, but never more than three at a time. One would not be out of the realm of possibility. They may be going to Nucor at Norfolk, NE.
Yes to both.
A couple years ago, I was called for MPRCB. (Manifest-Proviso to Council Bluffs) It was a small train that day and had been tied down in the yard. The train list showed a maximum speed of 60mph. We were under the tons per operative brake restriction so we could do 60. We went out to the train and the head car was a loaded RBMN hopper. We have a System Special Instructions restriction of 50mph for any car loaded with coal. I didn't understand why it hadn't been flagged on the train list for 50, so I checked the conductor's list. (The engineer's list is just a profile of tonnage, no car type, numbers or what the load is.) It showed the RBMN hopper loaded with anthracite and good for 60mph. I ran the train 50 that day.
jeffhergert It showed the RBMN hopper loaded with anthracite and good for 60mph. I ran the train 50 that day.
Interesting note about rules. Anthracite is a hard black rock, and doesn't or shouldn't throw off the nasty dust that most bituminous and especially PRB subbituminous does; it's also harder and relatively less prone to attrition damage if shaken a little more in transit. So it might not be an oversight to provide the exception.
But it is also assuredly 'coal fuel' and if your rule says coal goes 50 ...
Out of curiosity, what's the procedure (if any) to override or resolve a conflict like this, where two rules or instructions clash?
I wonder who burns anthracite these days?
C&NW, CA&E, MILW, CGW and IC fan
Apparantly there still is a demand for it for home heating, industrial use, and water filtration systems. Demand for the first two isn't what it used to be, but it's still there.
A lot of it is exported as well.
Found this website which looks interesting, www.readinganthracite.com.
The RBM&N hauls enough of it to call itself the "Road of Anthracite."
I think the use here is to make some of the intermediate 'additive' compounds used in specialty steel production (where anthracite is an acceptable lower-cost alternative to metallurgical coke). I'd also agree that activated carbon is a likely use (this stuff is interesting in having something like 500 square meters of relatively reactive surface area for each gram of mass!)
I have to be careful here because NE Pennsylvania anthracite (from the part of the world my family comes from) is fairly high-sulfur (which is often a metallurgical no-no) but that may not be typical of the stuff in the hopper cars mentioned in this context.
Phoebe Snow was a big fan of anthracite.
Phoebe says
And Phoebe knows
That smoke and ciders
Spoil good clothes
‘Tis thus a pleasure
And Delight
To take the Road
Of Anthracite.
EuclidPhoebe Snow was a big fan of anthracite.
I've had ciders spoil my clothes, too, but there was no hard coal involved. They were, however, hard ciders...
Some of those jingles wore no better, to modern eyes, than the use of anthracite as a locomotive fuel. Anyone remember the one with the foot-fetishist using Stepin Fetchit dialogue? Ouch!
RME Euclid Phoebe Snow was a big fan of anthracite. I've had ciders spoil my clothes, too, but there was no hard coal involved. They were, however, hard ciders... Some of those jingles wore no better, to modern eyes, than the use of anthracite as a locomotive fuel. Anyone remember the one with the foot-fetishist using Stepin Fetchit dialogue? Ouch!
Euclid Phoebe Snow was a big fan of anthracite.
Johnny
I've spoiled my clothes too, but that was on account of too many boilermakers. Cider, hard or otherwise, had nothing to do with it.
DeggestyDid your clothes get drunk on the hard cider and do something fooolish?
Technically, they did. In a semantical manner of speaking. Let's just say they did not do so alone.
I think those Phoebe Snow ads are brilliant. This one even has the rhythm and feel of the train ride:
Each passing look
At nook or brook
Unfolds a fly-
ing picture book
Of landscape bright,
Or mountain height,
Beside the Road
of
Anthracite.
By all means put the whole poem together!
Holy smoke David, if someone tried to put the whole "Phoebe Snow" poem together it would rival the length of "The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner!"
Or Steven Vincent Benet's "John Browns Body!"
The thing is, there's no "Phoebe Snow" poem in the conventional sense. Those short poems were singles that went with individual Lackawanna Railroad magazine and newspaper ads. Think "Burma Shave" rhymes (remember those?) and you'll see what I mean.
They were catchy and clever though!
Getting back to the original topic of the thread - one of the latest foodie fads is coal fired pizza...
OTOH, a single hopper could keep a bunch of these joints for quite a while.
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