Somebody around here needs this more then they need another rusty passenger car:
https://www.govplanet.com/for-sale/Drilling-Equipment-Lot-of-approx.-%28400%29-tons-of-Anthracite-Coal-R68450%3B-Tag-298719%3B-L-001-Pennsylvania/4615732?src=insideemail-govplanet-020521&utm_campaign=GP-GPD-012921&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=109588256&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9LInaWn1LW9ZoyZqO5r2R02XhgVS7EpfP7XKB_V5lpYRFyX0N3oM8h0d0nmv5YRRVjA2bLNqZRnvWcFECbyfx4IxjPig&utm_content=109588256&utm_source=hs_email

That stuff will go right through the grates.

You also need a firebox designed for anthracite such as a Wooten type.

New Coal? The last stuff I got was around 300 million years old.

Do we know the size of the coal? It looks like it would fall between buckwheat and rice. It would be suitable for a home heater with a stoker. It will need a grate suited to its size. [NOTE: You can't expect a stoker to crush anthracite the way a locomotive stoker can crush bituminous. It will jam the stoker.]

BTW the town is Selinsgrove.

Description Size
Broken 4" x 8"
Stove 2 7/16" x 1 5/8"
Nut 1 5/8 " x 13/16"
Pea 13/16" x 9/16"
Buckwheat 9/16" x 5/16"
Rice 5/16" x 3/16"
Barley 3/16" x 3/32"
Buckwheat #4 3/32" x 3/64"
Buckwheat #5 3/64" x 100M

Phil Mulligan

The fine print says "400 tons of baely sized anthracite coal", presumably a typo for barley size. Per Phil's posting above, Barley = 3/16" x 3/32".

- Doug Debs

Sounds like the fixin's for a water filtration plant, some of which reputedly used anthracite for filter media.

When our coal delivery never arrived on one leg of the AFT being pulled by Rdg. 2101 ( AFT 1) we " borrowed " a load of coal from a nearby power generating plant. It was very fine almost like face powder. Long story short we weren't able to open the throttle more than about 1/4 or most of it flew up the stack unburned.

A very slow trip indeed.

Ross Rowland

My bad on the size. Anthracite IS relatively pure carbon, hence the use in filtration plants. .

It could also be used in stoker-fed home heating furnaces. Plenty of them in NEPA. Selinsgrove is just West of the Anthracite Coal Region.

400 tons is a lot of coal, about 8 55-ton steam-era hopper cars. There had been a coal-fired generating plant in Shamokin Dam. Now there's a natural gas power plant.

BTW P&R's 31 1918 N-1 2-8-8-2's were stoker-equipped and were said to burn Buckwheat or Rice anthracite. They did have wide fireboxes but they also had big boilers, making the wide firebox less obvious. They were built under USRA auspices but were not the USRA/N&W Y-3 design account clearances on P&R branches. Instead, USRA used P&R's design. 11 of 31 built were rebuilt by RDG as 2-10-2's with the same boilers. By then they were burning an anthracite-bituminous mix, later straight bituminous.

As things happened, in the 1920's N&W wanted bigger fireboxes but not longer engines so the Y-5 and later got wide fireboxes. The A and J engines also have wide fireboxes but theirs are deep as well as wide. All 3 N&W classes had big boilers, making the wide firebox less obvious.

Phil Mulligan

A local tourist road got a deal on crushed coal. Same story: it went right up the stack, setting lineside fires. They later bought good steaming bituminous for a lot more per ton, and saved money because it burned so much better.

I think one of the reasons John Wootten's original (1870's) firebox was so wide was because the intended fuel was culm, a fine anthracite that was considered waste. The huge grate area made for low draft on each part of the firebox so the fuel would not lift off the grate.

Phil Mulligan

I'm a native of Selinsgrove.

I knew precisely where this pile was as soon as I saw 1) "government auction" and 2) it was in Selinsgrove.

40.809646743223176, -76.87671081198013

Enter into your favorite map program or GPS unit.

This is the (former?) heating plant for the Selinsgrove Center, formerly Selinsgrove State School and Hospital, formerly Selinsgrove Colony For Epileptics--in other words, a (dying) mental institution/asylum.

The place never had a rail line or siding, and I assure you that all the coal was sourced in the nearby Shamokin coal fields, with possible supplements of "river coal" on the spot market. (Come to think of it, it's possible there could have been some transloading of coal at the PRR station at Clifford, a feed mill siding about 1.8 miles away from this plant by road, but I've never seen any record of it.)

I can envision exactly one place that had better be bidding on this: Pioneer Coal Mine & Tunnel in Ashland. I don't think barley coal would work in CNJ 113 R&N 425 or 2102 or any other nearby steamers.

Or, a lifetime supply for caboose stoves.... (probably too small).

Howard P.

I'm not sure Pioneer Tunnel, locally known as "The Lokie," can use this coal. From what I've seen the 3' 6" gauge 0-4-0T burns large pieces of lump or broken anthracite, not the small barley which is more suited for stokers. I've seen the Lokie stay hot for hours as the coal in the firebox burns down.

http://www.pioneertunnel.com/

Phil Mulligan

The JiTong Railroad in China burned coal of this quality, and even finer size, in its engines. If you have unlimited amount of labor to have 3 firemen in the cab to shovel it, you can do it. It produced the largest clinkers I have ever seen - some 18 inches or more long.

Odd to me that you got powder coal at the power plant. The plant I went to received their coal in lumps and pulverized it on site. 1.5 gigawatt plan made of two 750 megawatt boilers/generators, each fed by multiple pulverizers, and each pulverizer had three 5000 horsepower electric motors. All the powder was fed right into the fire.