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Re: (erielack) Notes on the Types and sizes of Anthracite

I was 11 years old when WW2 started so can remember a lot about firing 
anthracite furances and watch loaded hopper cars from the bridges over the 
tracks.

As I recall almost everyone burned chestnut or pea coal in home furnaces. 
The only "stove" coal I recall was used in kitchen ranges and pot belly 
stoves...and there were still a lot of these around in 1940.  Large 
buildings such as the Hotel Casey in Scranton burned smaller sizes like 
buckwheat...as I recall then dumping coal while passing there. When I was in 
the Army dring th '50s they burned buckwheat anthracite to heat barracks 
(thanks to the influence of Congressman Dan Flood. They even shipped 
anthracite to Army bases in Germany)

Breakers could pretty much deliver any of the smaller sizes the market 
demanded regardless of what came out of the mine....main concern in the mine 
was not to use explosives that shattered the cao to dust or powder.

Anthracite could and did catch fire by spontaneous combustion, but it too 
some time. Witness the burning culm pile to be seen in one of the shots of 
the DL&W Scranton Shops in Vol III of DL&W Facilities.  When I worked one 
summer as an engineering summer student at the Scranton Electric Co power 
plant they were still trying to deal with a fire in a coal storage pile.

Almost all the loaded hopper cars I recall were filled with coal no langer 
than stove and must were much smaller. I suspect Bob Bahrs question is 
related to what should anthracite loads look like in HO....answer is that 
the pieces of coal should be barely visible!  In the Anthraite Railroad and 
Mining volumes that I am working on for Morning Sun there is a really great 
shot looking down on two laoded hoppers of anthracite ready to go up the 
Ashley Planes. The Blue Coal was really bright blue and was a blue dust that 
was applied in a water spray that seemed to also get all over the cars. When 
you handled it the blue powder easily rubbed off.  My recollection is that 
this was done only for a few years around 1940 or so.

Coal could be bouth in the summer months for about 75% of what it coast once 
the heating season started. Problem was that very few homeowners had coal 
bins big enough to take advantage of these prices. Not did retail coal 
dealers. The coal Compnies and railraods carried on vigorous campaigns to 
get industry to buy in regular tear around shipments but this never went 
anywhere since the indutrial users also did not want to invest in large coal 
storage facilties and have cash tied up in coal inventory.

The whole indutry was very complex and unfrtunately not too well documented 
in the later eyars.

Chuck Yungkurth
Boulder CO







- ----- Original Message ----- 
From: <Dlw1el2_@_aol.com>
To: <erielack_@_lists.railfan.net>
Sent: Saturday, February 28, 2009 7:49 PM
Subject: Re: (erielack) Notes on the Types and sizes of Anthracite


>
>
> In a message dated 2/28/2009 6:04:20 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
> jguthrie_@_pipeline.com writes:
>
>>  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.
>
> I understand  all that, but they had different sizes and they were 
> shipped
> as such, You listed them.
> So my question still is, what size coal by name was the most  abundantly
> produced, shipped, sold, consumed, etc.
>
> Bob Bahrs
>
>
>
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