Replacing Coal with Real Coal

[Dave John]

Or use a bit of steel, penny washer sized on the base part of the load before you coal /pva it. Lifts out with a magnet on a stick. 

[Porcy Mane]

Line the tender with cling film then fill with Das modelling clay to suitable level and shape. When dry, remove clink film, apply generous layer of PVA and drop in coal, finishing with a little coal dust. Shake off surplus when dry. 

 

You forgot to add, "pop in the oven for 10 minutes or until golden brown".

 

You have to remember that most of the people who buy RTR are quite happy with what they get and wouldn't want to be faffing about putting in coal. Some manufacturers do, from time to time, design tenders with removable moulded plastic coal, Bachmann's 9F for example. 

 I thought most RTR locos come with removable coal loads nowadays. Admittedly Cad-Cam manufacturing has made it hard to tell. Some of the recent and not so recent that I have encountered.

Bachmann:

Austerity 2-8-0, Std 4mt, Ivatt 4mt etc.

Hornby:

L1, K1, Q6 etc, etc.

 

 

P

[The Johnster]

No removable coal on my Baccy 64xx or 57xx, and I can't get into the cabs to install crew either.  Removable coal in correctly shaped bunkers and clip-on cab roofs please, or at least separate mouldings that we can break off and glue back on!

[Steven B]

Real locos were often low on coal at the end of their duties, and it looks wrong to have a loco arriving after a long journey at a terminus with a full tender bunker.  Plastic coal looks horribly plastic anyway, in bunkers or as loads in wagons.  

 

What's worse, a model loco arriving at a terminus with a full tender, or one leaving with a new train with an empty one? Either way you'll have it wrong 50% of the time!

 

 

Happy modelling.

 

Steven B.

[DCB]

What's worse, a model loco arriving at a terminus with a full tender,

or one leaving with a new train with an empty one?

Either way you'll have it wrong 50% of the time!

 

 

Happy modelling.

 

Steven B.

Best answer is A) tender about half empty.

Super scale solution is B) Loose coal vacuumed out in the fiddle yard

and refilled from the coal hopper when on shed.

I quite fancy doing the same with a rake of coal wagons.

A bonus is the layer of coal dust over the entire MPD/ layout / house.

Edited February 11, 2017 by DavidCBroad

[Porcy Mane]

Best answer is A) tender about half empty.

 

 

You forgot Answer A(1).Tender about half full.

[RexAshton]

Be nice to have the choice, though, wouldn't it?  Baccy 9F is probably the best approach, much better than the old Airfix Dean Goods which had a very unlikely pile of coal in it's tender to hide the motor, then showed the gears sticking out below the frames!

Fair point about the Dean but you get what you pay for.

[The Johnster]

You forgot Answer A(1).Tender about half full.

 

Optimist.

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

No removable coal on my Baccy 64xx or 57xx, and I can't get into the cabs to install crew either...

 On the 57XX with the body off the mechanism, there's two crosshead screws under the bunker, into a lump of cast ballast which is the main anchorage for the cab onto the footplate. Remove those screws, then lever under the cab doors to start flexing and breaking the fairly weak cement bond between cab front and the boiler and tanks.As it flexes release the handrails from the knobs just in friont of the cabside cut outs, if they are not free. Odd alarming cracking noise, but none I have tackled have taken any permanent damage. This pattern is typical of Bachmann, applies ot many other models, so the 64XX may well be of similar construction.

 

Best answer is A) tender about half empty. Super scale solution is B) Loose coal vacuumed out in the fiddle yard...

 It cannot be beyond the wit of man to make a 'lift' in a bunker to enable loose coal on top to rise and fall?

 

... refilled from the coal hopper when on shed. I quite fancy doing the same with a rake of coal wagons...

 What with the centre motor diesel traction for items like modern bogie hoppers having ample tractive performance, while with a coal fired friend we tried a train of 15 HTA loaded with loose coal, and there was no trouble with moving what must have been a scale payload of about 5lbs of coal. (The hardest part of the job was first busting up the coal to make it small enough!)

[Porcy Mane]

 It cannot be beyond the wit of man to make a 'lift' in a bunker to enable loose coal on top to rise and fall?

 

Have the coal rising up and down like water in a canal lock. Noooooooooooo. Maybe man can come up with a working 4mm fireman that climbs into the tender half way through an operating session to shovel the then very uneven coal load forward?

 

 

 while with a coal fired friend we tried a train of 15 HTA loaded with loose coal, and there was no trouble with moving what must have been a scale payload of about 5lbs of coal. (The hardest part of the job was first busting up the coal to make it small enough!)

 

15 loaded HTA's. A mere featherweight by kettle standards. Give it some real work to do.

 

 

P

[Fen End Pit]

On 11/02/2017 at 13:36, Porcy Mane said:

 

Have the coal rising up and down like water in a canal lock. Noooooooooooo. Maybe man can come up with a working 4mm fireman that climbs into the tender half way through an operating session to shovel the then very uneven coal load forward?

 

 

It has been done in an HO prototype by Marklin

https://www.maerklin.de/en/products/details/article/39005/

 

"A mechanism is built into the tender to lower the coal load in order to represent visually the consumption of coal in the tender in the World of Operation mode. For digital central controllers without mfx+ the lowering and raising of the coal load can be activated by means of special function F8."

 

David

[Graham Radish]

Theres no need to cut out the fake coal, just add small pieces real coal on top of it with PVA undiluted

[DCB]

On 11/02/2017 at 13:36, Porcy Mane said:

 

Have the coal rising up and down like water in a canal lock. Noooooooooooo. Maybe man can come up with a working 4mm fireman that climbs into the tender half way through an operating session to shovel the then very uneven coal load forward?

 

 

 

15 loaded HTA's. A mere featherweight by kettle standards. Give it some real work to do.

 

 

 

P

Come off it that's a V2 not a P1  More than 80 wagons is getting unrealistic .

 

 

 

 

[Porcy Mane]

17 hours ago, Fen End Pit said:

It has been done in an HO prototype by Marklin

 

But does the coal look like real coal?

 

Fireman must have shovelled coal out (and back in) to get to get such a fluid rise and fall and no quarter given to coals angle of repose.  

 

Last part of this video.

 

 

 

Amazing how the engineers got the sound project to sound more like a Gilson Lavis drum solo that a steam engine.

 

10 hours ago, DavidCBroad said:

Come off it that's a V2 not a P1

 

Mereley done to demonstrate haulage capacity of a well sprung chassis over rigid.

 

P

[The Johnster]

16 hours ago, Graham Radish said:

Theres no need to cut out the fake coal, just add small pieces real coal on top of it with PVA undiluted

But this is no good if, like me, you want to model the bunker half full (or half empty if you prefer) or empty.  Steam locos in service were visibly part empty of coal quite soon, after about an hour or so of coming off shed, and the pile diminishes throughout the working day, the turn being formulated within the loco’s ‘range’. Long distance non stop services thus have the largest coal capacity in their tender. Water can be obtained anywhere, even from troughs except on the Southern 

 

Glueing real coal on top of plastic is still worth doing, because it improves the look by, oh, I don’t know, quantum, but can result in an overfilled looking bunker.  This can be lived with in the morning part of my timetable but is less likely as the day progresses.  Btw, diluted pva is fine for this job. 

 

Edited June 17, 2020 by The Johnster

[Graham Radish]

Yea i understand youre looking for the best realism, was just thinking about a "quick" way of making locos look better, i know exactly what youre saying, they were rarely full

[MoonMonkey]

Hi, I have a bag of Gaugemaster 'coal' as I've used it in some wagons, but no actual coal fire, nor a coal merchants nearby that I'm aware of.  Does anyone have a view on how realistic the Gaugemaster 'coal' is how close it comes to the real thing?  I attach a photo of the wagons with the Gaugemaster product for reference if you haven't used it yourself.  I'm thinking of loading up the coal on a Dean Goods loco with it.  Period is WW2 so I gather there is more leeway in the quality of prototype coal that was used around this time.  I'd be grateful for any (constructive!!!) thoughts on this product...

[Graham Radish]

As long as its not overscaled (and a lot of them are) should be sound fella, i know a hell of a lot of the track ballasts are massively overscaled and look horrid, just found this video for you, hope you like it.

 

 

[Roy Langridge]

6 hours ago, MoonMonkey said:

Hi, I have a bag of Gaugemaster 'coal' as I've used it in some wagons, but no actual coal fire, nor a coal merchants nearby that I'm aware of.  Does anyone have a view on how realistic the Gaugemaster 'coal' is how close it comes to the real thing?  I attach a photo of the wagons with the Gaugemaster product for reference if you haven't used it yourself.  I'm thinking of loading up the coal on a Dean Goods loco with it.  Period is WW2 so I gather there is more leeway in the quality of prototype coal that was used around this time.  I'd be grateful for any (constructive!!!) thoughts on this product...

To me it looks to be a little on the large side. The “black book”’ says that coal for firing an engine should be about the size of a man’ fist. Ok, you would have to break some up, but you wouldn’t have time to break it all up. As an aside, big lump under the firehole door can be ideal.
 

Take a look on Flickr and search for “NCB coal wagon. In amongst a lot of irrelevant photos, you will find a fair few photos that show the size did vary, but was generally finer than you have there. 
 

Roy

[Harlequin]

Have a look at period photos, such as here: http://www.gwr.org.uk/no-tenders.html
 

GWR loco coal (best Welsh loco coal) was generally very chunky.

 

BTW: The OP also asked a similar question recently in the “Detailing RTR” forum and there are some more answers in there.

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by Harlequin

[teaky]

13 hours ago, MoonMonkey said:

... nor a coal merchants nearby ...

Wickes? (£3 for 10kg)

[John Tomlinson]

16 hours ago, The Johnster said:

But this is no good if, like me, you want to model the bunker half full (or half empty if you prefer) or empty.  Steam locos in service were visibly part empty of coal quite soon, after about an hour or so of coming off shed, and the pile diminishes throughout the working day, the turn being formulated within the loco’s ‘range’. Long distance non stop services thus have the largest coal capacity in their tender. Water can be obtained anywhere, even from troughs except on the Southern 

 

Glueing real coal on top of plastic is still worth doing, because it improves the look by, oh, I don’t know, quantum, but can result in an overfilled looking bunker.  This can be lived with in the morning part of my timetable but is less likely as the day progresses.  Btw, diluted pva is fine for this job. 

 

This isn't a problem with many of the Bachmann locos as the "coal" moulding is removable - I'm sure you know this. I've either dumped this moulding entirely or cut it down to sit lower and glued some fine coal on top. With non-removable mouldings close to the top of the coal space, I either live with it, as if recently off shed, or cut it out by drilling holes and then a pierceing saw, but then you need to make a replacement coal space to put the coal in.

 

Rather tend to go with Graham Radish on this, looking for a quick but noteworthy win, and with the Bachmann feature you can get a variety of heights which is surely the aim.

 

John.

[Compound2632]

For loaded wagons, rather than loco tenders, coal should be graded:

 

 

NRM DY 2806, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum. Cricklewood (aka Brent) Sidings, March 1905.

[The Johnster]

My coal is real, Welsh, and until last year was from a lump mined by myself at Big Pit, Blaenafon, a quarter of a century or so ago.  It ran out and I was very kindly given another lump mined from the same source by Tomparrishharry of this parry, which will probably last until I shuffle off my mortal coil and head for the great operating session in the sky...

 

Real coal was screened for size at the collieries, and available in a variety of lump sizes.  Loco coal was ideally fist size as has been stated, but at most sheds was whatever the railway could get, and larger lumps which could be broken up on the footplate adding to the poor fireman's work were probably better than dusty small coal which could easily block the airflow and draw of the fire.  I had a cab ride in 1966 on Lord Rowallan and employed myself in breaking large boulders; the tender was full of useless small coal interspersed with the boulders, and the fireman, a Kingmoor passed cleaner not much older than me, had never fired anything bigger than a Black 5 on local trip work.  This was of course at the end of steam when conditions had got pretty rough, but it had I think been a long time, possible before the war, since decent sized loco coal was guaranteed even at big main line depots; certainly poor coal seems a common thread in footplate tales from the period.

 

I'm old enough to remember house coal, delivered in sacks, and accompanying mother down to the merchant's office to order it at the ex TVR Salisbury Road yard in Cardiff.  There were, at least as I recall, 5 grades on offer, small or large cobbles, small cobbles being about fist size , and small or large nuts, which were smaller and tended to be anthracite, and more expensive but produced less smoke. Then there was nutty slack, which was a bit cheaper and contained a lot more 'small coal'.  You could specify a mixture if you liked, and the merchant would fill the sacks accordingly.  People tended to go for what experience suggested burned best and most cost effectively in their grates, which of course varied in size and shape.

 

I'm not sure how this related to commercial grading of coal, but commercial customers similarly ordered blends that suited their own needs best, so an urban gasworks might, for instance, use a different blend of coal to, say, a forge, or a factory with belt driven machinery.  Blends could be from different pits, or even different seams in the same pit.  These coals would have different calorific content, gas content, smoke producing qualities, acidity, sulpher content, and so on, and industrial boilers were built to burn specific types.  It's not just black rocks, you know...

[The Johnster]

My Bachmann small prairies and 56xx are awkward in that to cut the coal piece out you need to negotiate the inset lamp iron shield that is moulded integrally with the coal.  On the panniers, the coal is part of the ballast mazak casting that also includes the detail for the cab rear bulkhead, but this is easily removed.  You then have to cobble up replacement detail on plasticard, and cram as much Liquid Lead into the box created before topping it with a lid on to which the real coal can be glued.  My BR 3MT tank has coal moulded integrally with the bunker but at least this does not come to the top and there is a bit of room for a layer of real coal on top of it which still comes to a level consistent with the loco having started it's duty an hour or two ago...

 

Pva should not be mixed with lead as a resulting chemical reaction can lead to expansion of the mixed lump, which can be a problem in restricted spaces such as bunkers.  I've been lucky and it's not happened to me, yet, but I've been warned about this.