Coal, for use on steam hauled heritage railways - merged posts

[whole diary]

[broadgage]

Despite the strongly held views of some locomotive firemen, steam locomotives are not that fussy over the exact type of coal.
Remember that most railway companies back in the day used whatever was affordable in their area, so as to minimise transport.

The main requirements for good locomotive coal are as follows;
In reasonable sized lumps. Small coal tends to fall through the grate and to be wasted. Very large pieces have to be broken up, thereby increasing labour.
Of good calorific value, in order that a tender full will give a good mileage without replenishment.
Not liable to form clinker which sticks to the firebars and impairs proper combustion.

For power station use, size is irrelevant as the coal is ground to powder before combustion. Good calorific value, and limited clinker formation as just as important in a power station as in a loco.

Back in the good old days, loco coal was often screened to remove the small pieces. The rejected "small" could be used on open fires in waiting rooms and offices.
For record breaking attempts, each piece of coal was sometimes hand selected for optimum size.

[TonyK]

I recall one of the TV programmes about the olden days, which I think was about the Strawberry Line. There was a chap talking about when he was a small child, when his father was in charge of all things railway at a lightly used station with a level crossing. He used to set up a few old tins as a can shy on a barrel or something at the end of the platform. The coal the crew threw kept them warm at home.

[Red Squirrel]

Despite the strongly held views of some locomotive firemen, steam locomotives are not that fussy over the exact type of coal.

Whisper that near keepers of the One True Light.

Whilst the locos of lesser roads may be happy to burn lignite, or even peat, GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) locos were designed to run on best Welsh steam coal. Feeding them anything less amounts to cruelty.

[Robin Summerhill]

I recall one of the TV programmes about the olden days, which I think was about the Strawberry Line. There was a chap talking about when he was a small child, when his father was in charge of all things railway at a lightly used station with a level crossing. He used to set up a few old tins as a can shy on a barrel or something at the end of the platform. The coal the crew threw kept them warm at home.

Virtually every railway employee who was there in steam days had a tale about coal unofficially coming off engines, be it being given to crossing keepers (usually demolishing the privy or the front door in the process); shouting abuse at the footplate staff causing the fireman to try out his aim, and now this tale of glorified skittles.

If half the tales were true they wouldn’t have had enough coal left for the engines...

And whilst on the tail of tall tales, virtually every clerk in the 60s knew somebody who had devised a plan to save a railway line from the Beeching cuts, only to be told by their manager that “Your job is to close railways, not save them”

If half of those tales were true the BRB^‡(resolve) may as well have packed The Doctor back off to ICI and saved themselves a £24k pa wage bill

[Robin Summerhill]

GWR^▸ (Great Western Railway) locos were designed to run on best Welsh steam coal. Feeding them anything less amounts to cruelty.

They were originally designed to burn Welsh Steam coal, with that I can agree. Welsh coal was the obvious choice for the GWR because it was virtually on their doorstep.

However.post WW2 it was no longer available, as all the best stuff that was still being dug out at that time was being exported. That is why Sam Ell was charged with carrying out draughting experiments at Swindon in the 1950s which led to a number of modifications to GWR engines to allow them to steam on the rubbish that they were by then being given.

All currently preserved and operational ex-GWR locomotives lived through this process in the 50s. Suffice to say that if you fed a lot of them with Welsh steam coal today they’d be sick...

[broadgage]

I recall one of the TV programmes about the olden days, which I think was about the Strawberry Line. There was a chap talking about when he was a small child, when his father was in charge of all things railway at a lightly used station with a level crossing. He used to set up a few old tins as a can shy on a barrel or something at the end of the platform. The coal the crew threw kept them warm at home.

Virtually every railway employee who was there in steam days had a tale about coal unofficially coming off engines, be it being given to crossing keepers (usually demolishing the privy or the front door in the process); shouting abuse at the footplate staff causing the fireman to try out his aim, and now this tale of glorified skittles.

If half the tales were true they wouldn’t have had enough coal left for the engines...

And whilst on the tail of tall tales, virtually every clerk in the 60s knew somebody who had devised a plan to save a railway line from the Beeching cuts, only to be told by their manager that “Your job is to close railways, not save them”

If half of those tales were true the BRB^‡(resolve) may as well have packed The Doctor back off to ICI and saved themselves a £24k pa wage bill

I suspect that a lot of the stories about free coal were in fact true.
A loco had a coal capacity of a few tons.
If just 10 kilos was diverted to each of a dozen "customers" on each trip, the effect on total coal usage would be small and unlikely to be noticed.
10 kilos of coal would keep a domestic sized fireplace burning for up to a day. 10 kilos of "free" coal if obtained every day was about three and a half tons a year, ample for many homes.

On a busy route, a lot of homes could get free coal (each footplate crew having their own favourites)
And of course dropping off a bit of coal to a signal box, station waiting room or the like was not even dishonest, the fuel was still being used for railway purposes. Coal dropped from a moving train might of course miss the intended target and be collected by scavengers.
I suspect that the odd privy was demolished, but not that often or the cost of building a new privy would negate the value of the free coal.

And of course some coal was diverted at the depot before it even reached the loco.

[martyjon]

From my transporting days it was a common practice to cut out a coal wagon full of coal that had developed a hot box to be cut out of a coal train at Stoke Gifford yard and shunted to the cripples siding and over a matter of days that wagon would empty of its contents. One of my schoolchums residing in Harry Stoke would tell me of how he spent the weekend emptying a coal wagon in the yard behind his home so that the wagon could be repaired. By the way his father was a rail worker and many residents of Harry Stokes never shivered in their homes in winter.

[rower40]

Cross-border trains from Northern Ireland to the Republic always had empty tenders/bunkers on their return trip North, during WWII^▸ (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945).  This was because the Republic, as a neutral country with no coal of its own, needed every last ounce of coal it could get, and was no longer being supplied by the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), which needed the coal for powering the hostilities.

My father, as a schoolboy in Dublin during the war, told me that he made his own candles to provide light to study by, as the electricity supply was so unreliable.

[grahame]

....  This was because the Republic, as a neutral country with no coal of its own, ....

It may not have been suitable for rail use, but there was some coal mining in Ireland ... from Wikipedia

Arigna coal mining

The Arigna Coal Mine is famous for its very shallow deposits. Seams of culm were worked by miners lying on their sides to shovel the coal out. Mining lasted until 1990, and the coal was used for iron works and later for a power plant. With the demolition of the ESB Generating Station chimney, the era of collieries in the area ended.

[snip]

In 1958 the Arigna Power Station was opened to produce electricity. It was the first major power generating station in Connacht. The station was built specifically to burn the semi bituminous coal with its high ash content.

and

The Cavan & Leitrim Railway was a 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge railway in the counties of Leitrim and Cavan in northwest Ireland, which ran from 1887 until 1959. Unusually for Ireland, this 3 ft (914 mm) narrow gauge line survived on coal traffic, from the mine at Arigna. It outlived most of the other Irish narrow-gauge lines, giving a further lease of life to some of their redundant engines.

[grahame]

And remember that for 2022 ... the heritage sector has a different problem ... from Rail Business Daily

With the end in sight for UK^▸ (United Kingdom) coal for UK steam, heritage railways turn their sights overseas for continued supplies of coal.

The UK’s heritage railways have been forced to accept that the battle for continued domestic coal supplies is lost. Stocks from now-closed mines will soon be exhausted. The last mine producing steam coal is scheduled to close.

The Heritage Railway Association (HRA) says in spite of government support for the continued burning of coal by heritage steam operators, policy elsewhere is acting decisively against the opening of new mines. That means UK-produced coal for the nation’s much loved steam railways will run out in early 2022.

“Over the past five years every planning application for a new mine which could have produced the kind of coal we need has been refused,” said Steve Oates, Chief Executive of the HRA. “There are some limited stocks in reserve, and the last producing mine in the UK, Ffos-y-fran in South Wales, will close in early 2022. After that, unless we find an alternative source of supply, heritage railways will be running on coal dust.”

[GBM]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55923731
The leading climate scientist James Hansen has warned Boris Johnson that he risks “humiliation“ over plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria.

The UK^▸ (United Kingdom) government, which hosts a climate summit this year, has allowed the mine at Whitehaven to go ahead..............

Wrong type of coal?

[TonyK]

Cross-border trains from Northern Ireland to the Republic always had empty tenders/bunkers on their return trip North, during WWII^▸ (World War 2 - 1939 to 1945).  This was because the Republic, as a neutral country with no coal of its own, needed every last ounce of coal it could get, and was no longer being supplied by the UK^▸ (United Kingdom), which needed the coal for powering the hostilities.

It was not the only fuel, though. Spike Milligan describes how, when the Puckoon Flyer ran out of steam, the driver went off to borrow a bucket of peat. Famously, he stopped for a cup of tea...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-55923731
The leading climate scientist James Hansen has warned Boris Johnson that he risks “humiliation“ over plans for a new coal mine in Cumbria.

The UK government, which hosts a climate summit this year, has allowed the mine at Whitehaven to go ahead..............

Wrong type of coal?

Indeed it is. The mine will provide coking fuel for use in the steel industry. There isn't a viable alternative ingredient at the moment, so the choices are between closing the steelworks and shipping steel across the world, or shipping coal from distant lands, both of which will add to the emissions Mr Hansen is keen to remove. From what I have seen in the planning reports, there will be no opportunity for the heritage rail groups to buy from here. It will have to be Australia or Russia, or find a way of running on battery power.

[infoman]

Not my neck of the woods,but may I ask the approx location of the mine?

[grahame]

Not my neck of the woods,but may I ask the approx location of the mine?

On the west Cumbrian Coast - Whitehaven / Corcickle / St Bees stations on the nearby railway, which might be a sensible way to get any product out?   The plans are for mine head to be onshore, mining out under the sea. See https://www.westcumbriamining.com/wcm-factsheets/ and pages linked from there. Woodhouse Colliery; address: Whitehaven CA28 9LF

[infoman]

Thank you Grahame