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

[walter smith <wsmith5957_@_yahoo.com>]

Chuck;

    Ur right about the smaller sizes. My grandmother Smith had a coal furnace in the basement & a large coalbin holding at least 2 tons. It was my little chore to shovel the pea coal from one side to the other as it was used in the side near the furnace. Mom & dad also had a hot air furnace using peacoal & the kitchen stove used the same. One chore was filling the coalbucket for mom & toting it up from the cellar before going to school n the late 40s, early 50s. Also take ing out the ashes in a bushel basket & setting them in the cellar window, then going outside & heaving them around front for the garbageman to pickup (except on snowy days when u'd save them to spread in the driveway & walks). 
     Easier in the summertime when all I had to do was take care of the 'bucketaday'.....anybody know what I refer to??? I DO know that most folks used pea coal except for those who had stokers & use rice coal. Once or twice, dad got a load of 'stove' coal but that was rare.

Regards,

Walt Smith




________________________________
From: Chuck Yungkurth <raildata_@_comcast.net>
To: EL Mail List <erielack_@_lists.railfan.net>
Sent: Sunday, March 1, 2009 4:52:17 PM
Subject: 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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