Bringing this discussion here. I've been talking with a few people on and off line and wanted to see what the folks here might have to say. Anyway, CNJ 113 has had some issues mainlining steam pressure while burning 100% Anthracite, even during light engine moves. To be clear, this isn't a swipe at the the owner or the mechanical condition of the engine whatsoever. I've got no stake in the project, aside from watching and enjoying.

As I understand it, most northeast railroads blended Anthracite and Bituminous coal together. I even remember seeing a chart once from one of the the northeastern roads with a ratio of hard to soft coal, dating from sometime in the 30's. I believe the amount of hard coal did not exceed 10% in the mixture. I'd love to extend my very limited knowledge on this subject a bit. Anyone have more info?

Thanks

Dave

Hard coal burns more slowly than soft coal, which is why the large grate area Wootten fireboxes were developed - more coal burning less rapidly was necessary to provide the same BTU output as less soft coal releasing those BTUs more rapidly. Soft coal releases more volatiles which burn rapidly above the fire and into the tubes until oxygen is used up. The downside of soft coal is you have to fire it more frequently, of course.

It might be worthwhile for them to experiment with mixtures to determine what blend works best for them.

dave

I'd only had experience firing with soft coal until Steamtown got a shipment of hard coal in. It was late in the season and they had maybe one or two more trips to run and this was all they could get.

I had moved on to train dispatching by then, but rode in the cab of the 3254 on one of these trips. I remember that with the fire doors halfway open and a VERY thick fire, they were able to get to Moscow and back, but it wasn't easy. Glad I had moved on to desk duty by then.

I know there's a science to the "blending" though I've not run across much on it.

Dave,

Bob Fisher wrote a bit about this over the years (pertaining to the CNJ). By accounts I have read (mostly CNJ and RDG) the mix changed through the steam era. Towards the end, I have read that the only anthracite the CNJ was burning was reclaimed fines from culm banks and canal beds. I have also read that the RDG was almost entirely soft coal by the end of WWII.

Like you, I'd love to see some charts that show the changes through the years.

Rob

The combustion characteristics of anthracite and locomotive drafting do not seem to be compatible in my limited experience. Anthracite prefers heat retention and a steady, moderate (preferably pre-heated flow) of oxygen. Whereas, bituminous responds well ("explodes", might be a better term) as the volatiles come in contact with strong drafting oxygen, anthracite can be overwhelmed. Pardon the anthropomorphic references ...

Anthracite also will never duplicate the long-flame heat transfer in the tubes that bituminous achieves. It just does not have the same carbon content in volatiles. However under steady, slow drafting say, of industrial boilers with a thick and deep combustion bed, it is an excellent fuel.

I found this about the New Haven's attempts to burn Rhode Island anthracite:

http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/asc/findaid ... 37_009.pdf

The Bureau of Mines annual reports have a lot of interesting articles in them if I can find the index again (or if you can.) Some are available through archive.org, some at the LOC and some scattered around. I know there has to be at least one other study of what works and what doesn't--a link for a BOM article came up but it was broken.

You might see what the coal analysis is for what they're currently using. Our local coal (Pittsburgh #8) is too ashy for most places now, but CN burned a whole heck of a lot of it from its Rail and River mines in the early 1900s.

best idea I can think of is to grind the Anthracite into smaller chunks, a little more surface area but burn faster. I dunno if throwing a few chunks of wood in might do anything. Ross Shared a story here about a run they ran out of coal on 614, found some old ties nearby and threw them in, got home on that. Mixing may help you extend your bituminous, your not in heavy mainline requirements like in the steam days.

Greetings:
About 10 years ago, the price of soft coal went up quite a bit, so Valley Railroad tried burning hard coal (at the time it was half the price of soft) in our No.40 which has a fairly wide firebox. A couple of our firemen became quite good at firing it, but others found it quite challenging. So we began mixing hard and soft, half and half (not too precisely mind you, alternating front end loader scoops of hard and soft as the coal pocket was filled). With the mix, most all the firemen did fine (indeed, our No.97, which has a narrow firebox was fine with it too). Unfortunately, the hard coal mine we were using went belly up and although we tried several other mines, we never found another that would/could supply decent low ash hard coal without a lot of fines (which just clog the firebed & grates) at a price where it was competitive enough with soft coal to bother with.
While it would be neat to fire the 113 on hard coal, it would might be easier (on engine and crew, etc.) to use soft coal.
Good luck!
J.David

After reading Mr. Conrad's post, I wonder if the issues with CNJ 113 have more to do with the quality of the hard coal they are using, rather than hard coal vs. soft coal.

On another board in another galaxy of the internet, it is reported that the owner "insists" on the use of hard coal. This would lead to two questions related to the problem:

A.) is the root of the problem the owners "insistence" to only use hard coal or

B.) is the sole use of hard coal the root of the problem?

"When locomotives perform poorly, it is generally a reflection of the poor people operating the poor locomotives" (Unknown author)

I would add.....generally when you have one, you have the other......

People are the root cause of 99% of locomotive failures. (a nearly proven fact).

Kindly,

JohnE.

its obvious some engines were designed to deal with hard coal. If your operating, you budget for the coal you need to use. Your a business but running a steam engine, appropriate correctly. It does no good if your using hard coal and can barely switch around in the yard. Go get the soft coal and stop griping. If your going to be a hard hat owner and buy the hard coal you find you can barely move, yer outa business. Work it out and yer fine.

We are working on getting some bituminous coal to mix with our anthracite which is on hand. We are thinking 75% bituminous to 25% anthracite. We would like to have a test run before the Santa Trips. If this works out, I will report on it.

We have a new web site which is a work in progress: rrproject113.org. This was put together by new volunteer Oren Helbok and his work is outstanding. Some of it has to be edited yet.

Going back to Dave's original question, one must also consider what wide fireboxes were designed for. The Wooten patent (and subsequent variations) did not envision burning high quality anthracite. They were designed to burn culm, the waste of anthracite that is a few notches above dirt.

Judge Jesse Fell is widely credited with developing the first grates to effectively burn anthracite, but we don't have Fell Fireboxes. Why? Wooten, as part of the ever frugal Reading, saw the opportunity to burn the cheapest fuel available. He didn't set out to get the most heat out of good coal, he wanted to find a way to burn the junk no one else wanted. The Wooten firebox is not Fell's grates dropped in a locomotive, nor is it just a wide firebox. The narrow throat sheet, great width and shallow depth under the grates all contributed to the ability to burn waste... not the nice chunks your Uncle Buck bought to heat his house, rather the railroad wanted to burn the dust, mud and rock left after your Uncle's coal was processed.

I think many buffs look at anthracite engines with Wooten patent fireboxes or similar wide and semi-wide fireboxes as if they were machines built for top fuel. Nothing could be further from the truth.

While the anthracite dust burned well in Wooten fireboxes, that didn't mean they were less effective with soft coal. Economic changes impacted the mix of A coal and B coal as much as anything did.

From what I have read, a great part of the mix between A and B coal was sourcing. Some months one was cheaper so the pendulum swing of pricing influenced the mix.

I know Dave and the anthracite region guys are well versed in the tales of Ginther, Fell, Wooten and many others, but I never get tired of hearing about the old A coal days.

Rob

The grates used by the Reading for the low grade anthracite culm were cast bars that fit onto rocking beams. These bars had many small air passages in them, and when leveled into a table it was like a sheet of pegboard with rows of closely spaced air points of air entry across the entire floor. I wouldn't think that a table grate or finger grates would do as well burning fines......

dave

Attached, please find, in .pdf format, a scan from the book The 1925 Modern American Locomotive, Construction and Operation by Frederick J. Prior. It is still in print from Simmons-Boardman. The tables display the relative differences with regard to carbon and volatile matter between the various types of coals. It's interesting reading.