Wood vs. Coal for Fueling Steam Engines

[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]

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]

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

[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.

[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.

[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.

[Anonymous]

No, but I used to work around there.

OS

[KansasMike]

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

[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.

[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]

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.

[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

[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]

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

[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