Wood vs. Coal for Fueling Steam Engines

[nicknoyes]

Dear Subscribers,

When did coal replace wood as fuel for steam locomotives?
Could the wood burners be converted to coal?
Did coal provide better "milage" than wood?

Your help would be appreciated.

Thank you,

Nick

[Anonymous]

1. At least as early as the 1840s, but it varied by railroad and by territory. Railroads without ready access to on-line coal mines stuck with wood fuel quite late. (At Promontory in 1869, the CP Jupiter was wood-fueled; the UP 119 was coal-fueled.
2. Yes. Usually required a different stack and front-end netting.
3. Oh yes! Typical "hogged" wood fuel is only around 3,200 BTU per pound, assuming a 50% moisture content. Typical bituminous coal is in the 10,000-14,000 BTU per pound range.

OS

[Modelcar]

....Wonder where they found coal out on the plains {Promontory area}, to refuel the engine....Tenders were quite small then so they most likely had to haul some additional cars with coal with them...

[Anonymous]

QM -- You're right, there wasn't any coal on the plains along UP's route, but in Wyoming there was, at Carbon, Hanna, and Rock Springs, plus a number of other locations that were close at hand. There were coal mines at both Carbon and Rock Springs that emerged practically at the railroad's ballast shoulder. The route was intentionally bent to pass through Carbon just to reach the coal. Prior to its arriving at Carbon, the UP did burn wood, which was a real problem, because there were hardly any trees west of Omaha, either! The streambanks of the North Platte were denuded of cottonwoods hundreds of miles upstream, for both fuel and ties.

OS

[Anonymous]

One of the advantages that the eastern railroads had over the western roads was coal in their back yards. Yes, there was coal at Carbon Wyoming, but the locations of mines in the west are few and far between. Look at West Virginia and Pennsylvania where coal mines are everywhere. I am willing to bet that these two states had more miles of rails underground in the coal mines than the railroads had on the surface. (No facts to back up this assumption!) Also the coal in the east was anthricite (NE Pennsylvania) or bituminous (West Virginia, west Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Ohio) The coal found on the plains was sub bituminous which had a lower energy content than the coals in the east. However, this lower energy content coal was far superior to throwing logs on the fire when you consider the scarcity of trees in the plains.

[Valleyline]

Wood burners also had a different grate set up to prevent the fire from going down into the ashpan or the right of way. Wood burners are still in use on the White Mountains Central tourist line at Woodstock, New Hampshire. They run a Climax and a Heisler fueled with wood.

[Anonymous]

Whoa, there, WR! I wouldn't dispute your belief that there were more miles of rail underground in Pennsylvania and West Virginia than above -- there were a LOT of mines, and all the big ones used rail haulage. But don't dismiss the West quite so fast! There was a lot of coal mined on the prairie. Not even including the immense coal deposits of central and southern Illinois. Kansas was a very large coal producer -- if you've ever heard of a McNally-Pittsburg tipple, you might know that the Pittsburg is Pittsburg, Kansas. The whole territory in southeastern Kansas was heavily stripped. Iowa had coal mines. Oklahoma mines coal to this day. Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas are all coal-mining states, though in Texas it's mostly lignite. Going further west, Colorado, Utah, New Mexico, Washington, Arizona, Wyoming, and Montana were all major coal producers at a very early date. Agreed, Idaho, Oregon, Nevada, and California have virtually no coal. Colorado has coal seams that were profitably extracted practically everywhere a railroad went, then and now. More than half of Colorado is underlain with coal that has been or still is mined at numerous locations.

I think you are thinking of Powder River Basin coal when you say sub-bituminous. No railroad other than Northern Pacific burned that low-grade stuff, and in its case, not until the 1920s when it began strip-mining at Rosebud, Montana. The UP coal at Carbon, Hanna, Rock Springs, Kemmerer, etc., is all bituminous, in the 10,500-12,500 range.

[KansasMike]

Lots of deep mines in Southeast Kansas also. You from that area O.S.??

[Anonymous]

No, but I used to work around there.

OS

[jchnhtfd]

I recall at least one short line in Mississippi which burned wood, commercially, into the '50s -- but I don't have the reference here, so I'll have to try to remember to get it later. Not only does coal have more energy per pound (about 3 times as much) as wood, but it's a lot denser -- so you have at least twice as much weight in a given volume. Put another way, with a tender with a certain cubic capacity, you can go 6 to 10 times as far with coal as you could have with wood.

[dldance]

By the time the Central Pacific got to Promentory UT, they were desperate for wood - both for ties and for fuel. Not many trees east of the Sierras. They had resorted to using cottonwood - with a moisture content of well over 50%. [From my experience with cottonwood - when you hit it with an ax, it splashes liquid!] That actual derated the pulling power of their locomotives to the point that they were doubling hills that normally did not need it just to get rail to the end of the line. Some of the ties in wet places would sprout and grow until the dry season. More than one load of ties became boiler fuel before reaching its final destination.

dd

ps - there is coal in Idaho along the Wyoming border - but the formations are so faulted that it is not economically minable.

[Modelcar]

To everyone...Interesting data on the wood and coal....I just didn't realize there would have been coal mined that early out in the plains area....Interesting.

[Anonymous]

thanks for the info as well, now, could you tell us the difference between Coal and the Oil that they now use, thanks,
Brad

[Anonymous]

dd: there actually was one coal mine operated for a time in the 1920-1940 era in the vicinity of Victor, if memory serves me correctly. It never produced very much beyond home heating fuel for the valley.

Brad: don't quite understand your question. Coal vs. oil in steam engines?

OS

[Anonymous]

For O.S.
I was referring to the time of building the transcontinental railroad as to the availability of coal. True, much has been discovered and commercially mined in most of the western states, but in 1869 there was a precious little coal in the west.

[Anonymous]

Well, how could there be any coal mining in the West in 1869? There were no people in the West in 1869, save for 100,000 or so in California!

But I think you're completely overlooking the fact that the first objective of every railroad in the West was a source of coal for its locomotives and to supply traffic to its on-line communities, if that was at all possible. UP built straight to Carbon as quickly as they could. D&RG built straight to the Canon City coal fields and stopped for some time. The D&RGW in Utah was built specifically to break the UP monopoly on coal transportation to the smelters, mines, and towns of the Salt Lake Valley. Santa Fe built to the Raton field long before it turned its attention toward the silver boom at Leadville, or any transcontinental aspirations. The EP&SW built all the way to Dawson, New Mexico, hundreds of miles away from its owner's copper smelters, specifically to obtain coal.

And, you're overlooking that the preponderance of tonnage on the UP from the day it was completed at Promontory until the late 1880s was coal. The preponderance of traffic on the D&RG and C&S was ALWAYS coal, and still is. British Columbia and Washington State supplied large tonnages of coal into the coastwise trades and to Hawaii by the 1870s. Coal was a big business in the West by the 1870s, and grew as fast as the population would consume it. Go back into the Keystone Coal Manuals and look at the production figures. Go into Coal Age and look at the news and articles. The East had no monopoly on coal. That said, almost all of the expertise in the West came from the East -- the engineers and managers moved back and forth from East to West on frequent basis, chasing the salary.

OS

[Anonymous]

just how much power do they get from Oil instead of Coal, and can they go much farther with it? Thanks,
Brad

[Anonymous]

Fuel oil is in the range of 18,300 BTU per lb. Coal, bituminous, 10,200-14,600 BTU per lb. Oil loads into a container such as tender without entrained voids, whereas coal can have a lot of voids (it depends on how finely it's crushed). Efficiency of conversion into useful heat in the firebox isn't going to be a lot different, but I'm no expert on steam locomotive firebox combustion characteristics.

OS

[miniwyo]

O.S. I may be mistaken but about 1869 - 1870 is when the coal mines started popping up here in sweetwater county. let me do some research and I will come back with some facts.

Coal mines and the railroad built this town and mining and oil (more oil than mining nowadays) are also what is keeping this town and even this county alive. And I also believe that I saw somewhere that the State of Wyoming was the country's largest coal and trona producing state.

[Anonymous]

That's about right on the dates for Sweetwater County. Nothing happened until the railroad arrived. Carbon was founded in 1868 and abandoned in 1902 when the railroad bypassed it to eliminate mileage and a helper grade -- and by that time the Sweetwater County and Hanna mines had come into their own. Carbon's mines were gassy and troublesome, but the town did grow to 3,000 at its peak. It's a ghost town now, nothing there but a cemetery and some old waste dumps, and a baffling maze of roads.

Wyoming is indeed the largest producer of coal and trona in the U.S. It produced 35% of all U.S. coal in 2003, or 376,270,000 tons. No. 2 coal state in 2003 was West Virginia at 139,711,000 tons. As far as trona (natural soda ash), Wyoming produced 10.6 million tons in 2003, compared to a world total of 37.8 million tons of natural and synthetic soda ash, combined. The only other mines are at Parachute, Colo. (mothballed in 2003) and Searles, Calif. The Searles Mine is nameplated at about 15% of total U.S. capacity, but most of the mines are operating well below capacity.

OS

[dldance]

Remeber that the first coal in Wyoming was found lying at the surface - so the UP survey teams knew where it was and how important it was to route the railroad that way. Of course, mining the coal in earnest did not begin until the railroad got there. That coal played into the decision to use the Wyoming route for the transcon rather than the southern route (now the Sunset route). Both were considered as early as 1840's.

dd

[Anonymous]

Good point, dd.

[Anonymous]

Coal is a great, although polluting without cleanup, fuel. Coal was a local consumption commodity that really did not become a significant source of fuel in the US until about 1880. Coal had been found in many localities, however, without a means of transport it to market economically it could not compete with wood that could be chopped down anywhere there were trees. In the days of building the transcon railroad (1860-1869) roads were primitive and the haulage costs of the coal by oxcart would be uneconomical especially when you consided the volumes the railroads use. The eastern US railroads were in a better situation due to the extensive infrastructure and mines all over Applachia. Unless the mine was adjacent to a rail line it would not be a viable source of fuel for the railroads. Consider the transportation cost to haul the Power River Basin coal to market if the railroads were not there. I doubt that the PRB would have been developed without the UP and BNSF being there, except for a limited local consumption.

This was the case in the west before the advent of the railroads. Yes, coal had been discovered in many places in the west. The coal in Kansas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, etc would only be mined in small quantities to satisfy the local market, which at the time of building the transcom was very limited. The advent of the railroads made coal a competitive fuel in America. UP was fortunate enough to have coal at Carbon Wyoming which they exploited for their fuel as it was trackside. The CP was devoid of coal along their line from Sacramento so they had to use wood. Fortunately there was considerable abundance of trees in the high Sierras to fuel their trains although through Nevada trees were scarce. Due to Union Oil's testing of fuel oil in a SP steam engine in the '20s the SP found a source of local fuel for their California operations. If the oil experiment did not work today there might not be a tree in the high Sierras.

W R Watkins, P.E. Engineer of Mines degree from West Virginia University '63

[dldance]

Just a trivia note - the two replica steam engines at the Golden Spike National Monument were originally oil fired - buring used engine oil from Hill Air Force Base in Ogden. However, in a effort to improve authenticity, the UP replica was converted to burn coal and the CP replica now burns wood.

dd

[Anonymous]

I think that President Lincoln had a great part in choosing the route for the transcontinental railroad. Coal at Carbon Wyoming was found on the surface by the UP locating engineers, however, they would have not been surveying in this area if another route had been designated. Yes, the Sunset Route had better grades and not prone to snow that plagued the overland route. However, at that time we were engaged in the C civil War and Lincoln did not want to build a railroad that could possibly fall into the hands of the Confederacy.

[oltmannd]

Not all the Eastern RRs were so lucky. NYC had to build out to get WV coal and then haul it all over their system to fuel the locomotives. That long branch down into WV is still in service as part of NS now - was Conrail's WV secondary.

The NYC steam locomotive tenders devoted a lot more space to coal than water as a consequence.

[dldance]

QUOTE: Originally posted by wrwatkins

I think that President Lincoln had a great part in choosing the route for the transcontinental railroad. Coal at Carbon Wyoming was found on the surface by the UP locating engineers, however, they would have not been surveying in this area if another route had been designated. Yes, the Sunset Route had better grades and not prone to snow that plagued the overland route. However, at that time we were engaged in the C civil War and Lincoln did not want to build a railroad that could possibly fall into the hands of the Confederacy.

The Wyoming coal was known of before the UP locating engineers. My ancesters crossed Wyoming for the first time in 1847 - headed for Salt Lake. There is record of them both seeing and using coal for blacksmithing - repairs to wagon tires, etc. I know its not very good coal for that but it beats sagebrush and cottonwood. And your other points are also very true.

dd

[miniwyo]

Sagebrush?? In Wyoming??? Never!!!

[Anonymous]

A couple of somewhat random points, as a lot of issues have been covered well here.

1. The use of wood as boiler fuel became more and more a moot issue as the commercial lumber industry developed. Keep in mind that for any of these commodities, use as fuel has about the lowest economic value as one can conceive. Notwitholding the obvious disadvantages over bituminous and even sub-bituminous of low density, low BTU value and high moisture content, wood is also highly labor-intensive and could sell for a much higher price per board foot as construction product or even paper mill feedstock.

2. A good example of the breakdown wood vis-a-vis coal is in heavily wooded east Texas (lots of conifer and deciduous/evergreen hardwood forest) where the underlaying lignite had been mined since the mid-1800's--first underground and then by stripping (still do--used for steam coal in power plants all over east and south Texas). Even though the stuff is essentially refined dirt (about 6500 BTU) it still paid the MP/IGN to develop a fleet of lignite-fired locomotives in the early 20th century that used local lignite on the divisions around Palestine and Longview on the old Eagle Route, if for no other reason than it could be handled so much more cheaply than wood, both on-board and on the ground. But if you want to get some idea of what a high-tonnage wood-fired locomotive might have looked like, take a gander at some of the IGN lignite fired power from that time period--BIIIIIIIG Boilers and lots of tare for substantially lower horsepower output and shorter range. Needless to say, when oil became available the switch was made.

3. Regarding oil, it has the highest BTU content, is the easiest to handle and store at the point of use, requires the least amount of fixed facilities (no tipples, just a pipe, no fires to drop, grates to clean, a***o convey and clog tubes, or clinkers), transports the easiest, burns the cleanest (everybody won on that one), results in the least maintenance requirements (and the longest boiler/firebox maintenance cycles--not a minor issue even in the days of inexpensive RR labor), and was cheapest, even when not local--e.g., in the early 1900's the Katy started out burning imported Mexican oil long before it used Texas and Oklahoma oil. Where oil was readily available, there was no question which commodity won based on economics. Also not readily apparent to the layman is that coal could not be fractionated easily, and thus you bought coal based on its material properties for specific applications, resulting in tightly defined markets and the issue I cited above--relative value with respect to price and application with steam coal being at the bottom of the barrel (bad pun--sorry!!). Oil, on the other hand, had this wonderful ability to be refined, so that the high dollar products came out of the same run as the waste, which just happened to be ideally suited for use as locomotive and power plant fuel stock. The same was true for natural gas at the other end of the spectrum--there was so much of it that for a long time they gave it away, either practically or actually, and for power generation that exactly fits the bill. Texaco alone flared trillions of cubic feet of perfectly usable excess natural gas in the 1920's and 30's because, unlike the liquid fractions coming out of the well/refinery, there was no infrastructure to transport it and store it economically! The relative uniformity of oils made steam locomotive fireboxes a perfectly desirable destination because the boiler didn't have to be sized to a specific range of coals (see lignite above) and because it really didn't care which fractions it burned. The same oil-fired steam locomotive that burned residual, crude or bunker C when it was part of a vast fleet now just as happily burns #1 or #2 heating oil or diesel as an operating museum piece today. That gave the RRs a lot of flexibility as to what they bought, which was generally all by-products anyway.

[Anonymous]

Excellent post! I wasn't aware the IGN used lignite. I had thought the only western road to delve into sub-bituminous or lignite in a big way was Northern Pacific, burning Rosebud sub-bituminous with a BTU of around 8,800 BTU/lb. As an aside, this coal was unfortunately called "lignite" at the time, instead of sub-bitumininous which has misled a lot of people since then.

Aren't economics and geography fascinating? I can learn about this stuff all day.

I was just told that oil-fired locomotives on one major road usually had a 10-year heavy overhaul cycle while its similar-sized coal-fired locomotives had a 15-year heavy overhaul cycle, because the locomotives that were oil fired had greater thermal shock cycles in their fireboxes, which tore them apart faster.

OS