Coal

[clark33]

 

I'm pondering coal traffic.

 

I've done some car card / way bill printing for my car card operating system. The loads/empties are an ethanol-gasoline mix to/from Fort Meade, MD and Key West, FL. My bend on history is a deep water ferry port in Key West; ethanol production in a Cuban sugar mill; SAL running rights on the FEC; no closing of the overseas extension after the 1935 hurricane; Ft Meade is co-researching ethanol fuel for military use for the USATC at Ft Eustis.

 

Anyway, I picked up a 6-pack of Tichy USRA hoppers. Aha, I thought;I 'll letter them Pennsylvania. Just what I need for coal traffic to Key West steamships. No. Poorly researched. Hardly Any merchant ships used coal. Even Liberty ships used oil. Then I learnt that USRA hoppers would be scarce. Life expired and a few patched for short lines.

I still wanted some coal traffic. The KD are tempting. But would need re-lettering.

 

Anyone know what ships bunker coal is described as? Where there any mines producing this coal,? on the Western Maryland? I want to route my hoppers south from Baltimore.

 

Phil Clark

[dave1905]

Coal is used for heating, firing boilers and metalurgical processes.

 

Heating in the Florida Keys isn't necessary, its a tropical environment.

 

Coal would be used to fire boilers for industrial purposes, steam plants, kilns, electric power stations, etc. Those activities might be on the Florida Keys.

 

Metalurgical process would be smelting ores, heating steel and metals for rolling, forging and casting. These activities would be fairly rare on the Florida Keys.

 

There wouldn't be a commodity of "bunker coal", it would be just "coal". Coal would be differentiated by size or packaging, not by use. If you are shipping coal in PRR hoppers then you want a mine on the PRR. Railroads tended to load coal in their own cars. Since pretty much every thing you have is pointing twoards the 1950's or earlier (USRA hoppers, riveted tank cars, the USATC) why not move toward that era? The PRR served coal mines in central Pennsylvania.

 

There is also no reason you couldn't ship something other than coal in those hoppers. Sand, gravel, other types of ores could just as easily be in open top hoppers. For example a glass plant could recieve silica sand, a fire brick company might recieve a certain type of clay or rock, etc. There might shipments of slag for a cement plant, or rock/slag to make sandblasting grit. All sorts of stuff. Would the ethanol process recieve any limestone or petroleum coke for filtration or other processes? What powers the Cuban ethanol plants? US plants use natural gas, what do they use in Cuba? Coal, coke, fuel oil?

 

Just for your information, a railroad doesn't lease cars for its customer's use, the tank cars wouldn't be leased by the SAL, it would be leased by either the shipper or consignee (normally the shipper). If it was leased to the SAL it would be hauling railroad materials, diesel fuel, lube oil, etc.

[Adrian Wintle]

You might consider that the coal traffic could be for domestic/industrial use in Cuba (i.e. reverse traffic compared to your ethanol). It could arrive in hoppers from any of the big lines, but USRA hoppers would be unlikely from the Pennsy or N&W as they built their own hoppers. I would exclude the anthracite lines, so WM, Virginian, etc might be your best bets.

 

Adrian

[CVSNE]

You might consider that the coal traffic could be for domestic/industrial use in Cuba (i.e. reverse traffic compared to your ethanol). It could arrive in hoppers from any of the big lines, but USRA hoppers would be unlikely from the Pennsy or N&W as they built their own hoppers. I would exclude the anthracite lines, so WM, Virginian, etc might be your best bets.

 

Adrian

 

Another possibility for open-top car lading in Florida that makes sense would be phosphate. Even today, FEC rosters phosate cars that look a lot like "boxy" two-bay hoppers.

 

Pennsy had a small (miniscule, actually compared to the PRR's vast fleet of hoppers) number of USRA twin hopper cars - the vast majority of PRR hoppers were home built cars of the 3- and 4-bayt variety. In addition, twin hoppers were used for delivery to smaller consignees - like retail coal yards - something like a steel mill that consumed massive amounts of coal would not typically get the coal in a two-bay hopper - the three and four bay cars would have been much more common.

 

As far as road names on hoppers go, Virginian (and C&O) would not be the best choice since VGN and C&O coal was primarily shipped from the Virginia coal fields to Tidewater where it was dumped into ships. So most of their hoppers were in captive service and I doubt would have ended up in Florida.

 

It's your railroad, of course, so do what you like, but I'll go ahead and articulate what I think is the "unsaid" message of the two previous posters - coal traffic to Florida in PRR USRA twins is not going to seem terribly plausible.

[dave1905]

Google is a wonderful thing. Searching for "stcc coal":

 

http://www.cn.ca/documents/Shipping/bulk_stcc_fr.pdf

[CraigZ]

Another possibility for open-top car lading in Florida that makes sense would be phosphate. Even today, FEC rosters phosate cars that look a lot like "boxy" two-bay hoppers.

 

Pennsy had a small (miniscule, actually compared to the PRR's vast fleet of hoppers) number of USRA twin hopper cars - the vast majority of PRR hoppers were home built cars of the 3- and 4-bayt variety. In addition, twin hoppers were used for delivery to smaller consignees - like retail coal yards - something like a steel mill that consumed massive amounts of coal would not typically get the coal in a two-bay hopper - the three and four bay cars would have been much more common.

 

As far as road names on hoppers go, Virginian (and C&O) would not be the best choice since VGN and C&O coal was primarily shipped from the Virginia coal fields to Tidewater where it was dumped into ships. So most of their hoppers were in captive service and I doubt would have ended up in Florida.

 

It's your railroad, of course, so do what you like, but I'll go ahead and articulate what I think is the "unsaid" message of the two previous posters - coal traffic to Florida in PRR USRA twins is not going to seem terribly plausible.

 

Phil, entire trains of C&O and Clinchfield loaded hoppers were interchanged to the Seaboard at Bostic, NC; Warren Calloway remembers seeing solid trains of N&W coal hoppers heading south on the ACL through eastern NC.

 

The odd and occasional PRR hopper is plausible; after all there's been multiple discussions on the Steam Era Freight Car List with C&O loaded hoppers showing up out west. There is, after all, a prototype for everything

[CVSNE]

Phil, entire trains of C&O and Clinchfield loaded hoppers were interchanged to the Seaboard at Bostic, NC; Warren Calloway remembers seeing solid trains of N&W coal hoppers heading south on the ACL through eastern NC.

 

 

 

... and neither of which are close to the Floriday Keys . . .

[Adrian Wintle]

The odd and occasional PRR hopper is plausible;

 

Agreed, but the chance of it being a USRA hopper is remote. It would be much more likely to be a GLa if it was a two-bay.

 

Adrian

[dave1905]

One thing to remember is that the entire reason for the layout is to support a fictional set of "what if" scenarios.

 

The line to the Keys is restored after a hurricane (and multiple successive hurricanes).

The US is still trading with Cuba.

The US military is using gasahol.

Cuba is producing alcohol.

The US is buying alcohol from Cuba.

 

The OP is the only one qualified to decide where the limits of the scenario extend. It would be just as easy to say all ocean going ships are still coal fired, the coal mines in Pennsylvania are going great guns and the USRA hoppers were rebuilt specifically for this service because the bridge system to Key West can't hand 70 ton cars.

 

At what point does "prototype" cease to matter and you just add whatever is necessary to justify the story. One could say that the mines in PA won the contract to supply coal to a company that operates the fueling lighters. That company runs the fueling operations for the Port of Key West, so they get their coal from a mine in PA served by the PRR. Viola! PRR hoppers in Key West. If you are going to go, go big!

[Adrian Wintle]

One thing to remember is that the entire reason for the layout is to support a fictional set of "what if" scenarios.

 

The OP is the only one qualified to decide where the limits of the scenario extend. It would be just as easy to say all ocean going ships are still coal fired, the coal mines in Pennsylvania are going great guns and the USRA hoppers were rebuilt specifically for this service because the bridge system to Key West can't hand 70 ton cars.

 

Agreed, but if the scenario is set in a framework of history, it would be hard to justify erasing the ~50,000 GL/GLa 50-ton 2-bay hoppers that the PRR built. They only had 300 USRA hoppers (GLd). http://www.byz.org/~morven/Railway32/freight/hoppers/index.html

 

The PRR wouldn't have been "The Standard Railway of the World" if it meekly accepted USRA stock rather than going its own way...

 

Adrian

[CraigZ]

... and neither of which are close to the Floriday Keys . . .

 

Well yeah...and you missed my point. Coal to the keys isn't just going to fly from the mine to someplace in Florida to get loaded to go to the Keys. It's going to connect someplace...like Bostic.

 

IF coal was going to the Keys via rail, it would likely get to the FEC via the ACL, SAL or Southern and probably at Jacksonville. Clinchfield coal would get to the SAL via Bostic; C&O coal via Richmond or also via Bostic due to the Clinchfield and C&O's end on connection at Elkhorn City, KY. Another option is Virginian coal via SAL/VGN interchange at Alberta, VA.

 

Coal to the ACL via...probably the Winston Salem Southbound would be N&W or Virginian coming down from Roanoke. C&O coal via Richmond again; Virginian via connection at Jarrett, VA...assumes the VGN didn't get pulled up 40 years ago!

 

Southern would bring their coal all the way south from southwestern VA.

 

Phil's supposition is via SAL running rights on the Overseas Extension so I'm suggestion he go with Clinchfield, C&O or Virginian coal...

[CVSNE]

Craig,

 

 

I don't disagree with anything you said. I was merely trying to answer the original post about using PRR USRA hopper cars to deliver coal to the southern-most tip of Florida.

 

When we start freelancing - and this is extreme freelancing to some degree - there's a good chance plausibility would suffer. Could PRR USRA twin hoppers end up with coal from the Virginia fields in the Florida Keys? Sure, anything is possible. Is it plausible is another question entirely. Of course I'm not even sure what era we're talking about here - which could change the scenario entirely. My personal acid test for such things is simple - If I saw a layout (or photo of a layout) showing "such and such" would it make me raise my eyebrow and think "That's curious?" If the answer is yes, I sometimes find it best to rethink things.

 

As they say, it's your layout (or in this case, his layout) so he's free to do what he wants -

[clark33]

Gentlemen, thank you for comment and observations.

 

Dave, I guessed as much: that the ‘bunker coal’ commodity ought to be ‘coal’. The locomotive crew would hardly care; it’s just loads and empties. The company accountant bean counters would be quite concerned on the profit and loss. I was curious because I’d operated with car-card / way-bill systems in UK and US, and now I have a railway room I wanted to try myself and wondered where/how the commodity descriptor came from.

Powering the plant? I’m presuming the sugar cane ethanol is produced in the mill overseas and power is from burning bagasse.

I’ll zap the lessee notes on my computer and print fresh cards. Your comments make sense.

The idea of a poorly maintained FEC R.O.W. and hurricane weakened bridges appeals to me.

 

Adrian, of coal shipment? Which are the anthracite lines?

 

Marty, I’ll keep to small hoppers. In my bend on history there isn’t a flow of phosphate.

 

Craig, Clinchfield, C&O or Virginian coal hoppers going south on the SAL are credible. In reality I’ll rethink my hopper acquisitions here. There’s a decal/model sourcing issue here. Makes me smile, didn’t Mike Brock on the STMFC Yahoo list write; ‘… there is always an NP boxcar in any consist …’

 

Phil Clark, Catarman, Philippines.

[Adrian Wintle]

Adrian, of coal shipment? Which are the anthracite lines?

 

Basically, the lines that served the anthracite fields of central and eastern Pennsylvania - Lehigh Valley, Reading, CNJ, and to a lesser extent Erie Lackawanna, D&H.

 

Adrian

[dave1905]

Dave, I guessed as much: that the ‘bunker coal’ commodity ought to be ‘coal’. The locomotive crew would hardly care; it’s just loads and empties. The company accountant bean counters would be quite concerned on the profit and loss.

 

But it only makes a difference if the commodity is different, if "bunker" coal is the same coal as other coal, the rate charged for carrying the coal then it doesn't make a difference. Remember the railroad doesn't mine the coal, they don't buy the coal, they don't own the coal, they don't sell the coal. All they do is haul the coal.

 

I was curious because I’d operated with car-card / way-bill systems in UK and US, and now I have a railway room I wanted to try myself and wondered where/how the commodity descriptor came from.

 

You have a very unique car card system. In the ones I've designed and used the commodity information was on the waybill and you seem to have most of the commodity information on the car card itself. Very unusual.

 

 

Adrian, of coal shipment? Which are the anthracite lines?

 

RDG, LV, CNJ/CRP, LNE, LHR, NYSW, DLW and to a lesser extent PRR. Generally the area between the Susquehana and Deleaware rivers, north of Reading in Pennsylvania

 

Craig, Clinchfield, C&O or Virginian coal hoppers going south on the SAL are credible. In reality I’ll rethink my hopper acquisitions here. There’s a decal/model sourcing issue here. Makes me smile, didn’t Mike Brock on the STMFC Yahoo list write; ‘… there is always an NP boxcar in any consist …’

 

Hoppers have a different flow, they tend to stay closer to home. The PRR H21 70 ton quad hopper was probably one of the "most common" cars in the US as a specific class as a percentage of the total US fleet, but would have been relatively rare more than a couple hundred miles from the PRR.