> What would be the most numerous size produced? The size used for home > heating? And that would be egg or stove? Sizes were produced in large measure by the mining techniques. When you mined the coal and then ran it through the breaker, you got a whole range of sizes and to a great extent, you could not control that, unless you **wanted** small sizes such as the Buckwheats. But smaller sizes went for less money per ton, so the railroads did not like producing any more than necessary. Domestic users might like the price, but didn;t like the dust and bother. One of the issues that faced the industry was that the year round industrial customers switched to bituminous because it was cheaper, but could also use anthracite in the small sizes with bituminous if the local authorities fined them for violating anti-nuisance and smoke abatement laws (the anthracite railroads were the pioneers in imposing what we now call environmental laws). An example of a major year-round customer for the NYS&W and to a lesser extent the DL&W in the 1880s and 90s were the elevated railroads in Brooklyn and Manhattan respectively. Obviously, those trains ran 24/7/365. The business evaporated with electrification although central steam and the Metropolitan Railway So. made up for some of it. > Would it be safe to say that the large storage yards that most RR had for > stock piling coal during the summer months and then reloading it back into > RR > cars for shipment in the fall and winter was of Stove or Egg? It wouldn't > make any sense to separate coal at a breaker and then remix it with a > different > size at a ground storage facility. I 'm sure there were many of these at > various locations on all the Anthacite roads. East Dover and Hampton, PA > on the > Lackawanna come to mind. Hampton, NJ on the CNJ would be another. The biggest in the NY area was the LV's at South Plainfield; the smallest Dodge plant was the NYS&W's at Pompton. You are correct that domestic sizes would be most of the storage yards --- both because to get the larger steam sizes there was alot of extra domestic in the off season. But for the LV, DL&W and Erie -- and a lesser extent the Reading and the D&H, sending anthracite to Buffalo in the Great Lakes Shipping season evened out the business quite a bit. The railroads also offered discounts for domestic sizes in the off season, and many people who could afford to stock up did so. Unlike bituminous, anthracite is generally not prone to spontaneous cumbustion when stored for a long time. Until the advent of the storage yards, railroads used their cars for storage -- but that meant that mines would have to shut down for lack of car service. Anthracite railroads were also loath to interchange cars -- which was another impetous to dump at tidewater (and why the Poughkeepsie bridge played a rather small role in the trade, despite the hype of its promoters). There were other reason for the storage yards -- not the least of which was the railroads efforts to bust the UMW once and for all after the strikes of 1900 and 1902. Hanging union leaders (as the P&R did) or shooting strikes (as at Lattimer) did not go over vry well with the public at large. The storage plants were far more benign. Cheers, Jim The Erie Lackawanna Mailing List http://EL-List.railfan.net/ To Unsubscribe: http://Lists.Railfan.net/erielackunsub.html ------------------------------
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