I've been waiting for a coal question to come up.

What about the EBT, they use Anthracite and they seemed to love the stuff? They bragged about it being so great for 75 years. Those 3-footers had deep wide fireboxes too, and they ran great on the stuff. It seemed like an advantage to them.

On the 3-foot gauge D&S and C&TS that is the suitiest, dirtiest exhaust of coal smoke that I've ever seen, (but being born in the mid 1960's I have not seen much coal smoke!) but it burns well and makes great heat! You will get filthy if you hang around there for even a short time if a loco is under steam, that black ash just rains down on you and ruins your cloths for the day! Its more fun that way for some guys I suppose.

I've often wondered if the low-sulfur coal that comes out of Wyoming's Powder River is well suited for the small-scale livesteam locomotives. I think a lot of the livesteamers use a combination of bituminous and anthracite to make the firing a little simpler when they need to run and not tend the fire so much, because its not possible to tend the fire when running the small scales so they have to just keep running till they get to a stop before they can tend. To combat the problem they use a slow burning anty coal mixed together with a faster burning bitty coal and it works well for them I'm told.

I'm trying to decide if i would rather use bitty or anty coal in my large-scale NG locomotive that I'm working toward building. My loco is large enough to be able to tend the fire when running, so I don't have to mix coal to suit the loco but, the firebox and draft have to be very different so I have a lot of questions to be answered before I build the details to suit one type of coal.

I would choose to use anthracite and have a clean exhaust and easy long controlled firing, if I can get it at a competitive cost in a hopper car-load quantity. Isn't the cost for hopper full of anthracite coal a lot higher than the cost of bity coal that is easily strip mined?

The EBT has burned anthracite for 75 years? That surprises me, as it was built to haul semi-bituminous coal from the Broad Top field.

Have they really spent 75 years paying to bring in coal from a distance instead of burning the hometown rock?

Rob

Your right, they did burn semi-bity.

I just remember an old add showing a huge piece of "Broad Top" coal that said "Smokeless Broad Top coal", the finest, etc. etc.. That always had me thinking it was anthracite, since anthracite is known as the "smokeless" variety.

Its the apparent contradiction that had "assuming" it was anty.

So how dose EBT semi-bituminous turn out to be smokeless? All the bituminous I've ever seen looks like an old tire on fire! It must be semi-anthracite also but, more bity than anty or it would be semi-anty. So you are right and I messed up on that one.

So now my best question yet, can I buy a car load of "Broad Top" coal for the same price as that rocky low-sulfur dirt that they haul and burn in the electric plants down here in Texas?
(ha ha)

I goofed. Rule #1; never assume, even though all the evidence appears to be one way. I'm getting old and senile I suspect.

Deep, vertical sides and air from underneath is essential for hand fired stoves that burn anthracite. You might see a lot of these outdoor wood boilers labaled as wood/coal but generally they are made for wood and are probelmeitc at the least when trying to burn anthracite.

Here's a proper firebox for hand fed boiler:


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How about a stoker for that train?


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The second picture is from a automatic stoker, the coal is augered from the round opening on the left into the pot. Note the holes for air, the air is forced though the coal. A unit like this is not much different that a conventional oil or gas boiler. It will ramp up or doen as needed. It uses a very small sized coal.




Shipping aside anthracite is about double the cost of bituminous. Other than the higher market value it goes through a second process where it's separated from the rock in a menzies cone. It's then sized, when you buy anthracite it will all be uniform in size.

Thanks "thecoalman", but about the auger,>, I want to hand fire the locos, thats the fun part. Thats a nice looking firebox shown above.

I just read that there is a company thats deep mining "Broad Top" coal again and the EBT is now burning the same semi-bity smokeless coal that it grew up on. I've sent an inquiry to the "Penn Keystone coal company"; http://penncoal.com/default.php
to see what a 23 ton load of "Broad Top" semi-bituminous "smokeless" coal would cost and for an estimated delivery cost.

Does anyone have a chemical and physical (size) analysis report on the coal that the EBT burned in its locos? I'd like to inquire about that same coal and having that analysis of the EBT's coal would help match it up with the supplier. Was it uniform or did it vary in size?

I have seen times over the excursion years when the tenders of EBT locos were loaded with what was obviously loads of coal straight out of the mines, with NO processing whatsoever--I have a photo somewhere of what must have been a five- or six-foot-long hunk of coal, probably weighing several hundred pounds, in the tender of one of the locos. This is not as unusual as one raised to think coal comes nicely washed in clean bags may think--I've seen similar huge chunks in British tenders, and my understanding of the European mode of firing is that the energy the fireman saves in the economy of coal usage by these locos is often made up by having to break down the bigger chunks with a sledgehammer.

Rumors around the Fall Spectaculars/Reunions a few years back indicated that Linn Moedinger had directed the EBT forces to a better, more consistent source of coal, in part to replace the Broad Top sources that were getting to be a pain to mine, but also supposedly to help prolong the lives of the locos.

Here is my reply from "Penn-Keystone" about the EBT coal;



Not a bad price for a decade worth of coal buring fun!

If you want to burn coal in Texas, you can get pretty good soft coal at Rock Island, OK...about 100 per ton and there is a $200 minimum...about three hours from Dallas. We used to burn the stuff in our Gaar Scott plowing engine, was good and hot. About the same stuff the KO&G hauled and burned.

Jim, do you know the mine or the company that sells it? I'll ask them for an analysis sheet to compare it. I guess I can find them by looking up "coal" in that city.

Was it; soft/hard, smoke/smokless, dirty/clean?

Did it leave clinkers and or a lot of ash, how were the cinders?

What did it look like, and was it easy to start of very difficult to start or just in between?

Thanks

Soft coal, from Oklahoma, is usually pretty smokey till it gets hot, and will often times be sulferous. I don't know what you want it to do, but I know some cats in Plano that used it very successfully in small boilers and as blacksmith coal. We just used it like any other coal, started with wood kinderling and just oozed it on. I did start a time or two with just coal and a little diesel spayed on it and lit with a soaked paper.
Methinks you may be overthinking your coal requirements...I have used coal for 25 years, and the only stuff that didn't do what I wanted it to easily was lignite, but it was free, so I lived with it for a day or two, and figgered it out. If you aren't willing learn the coal, and expect coal to be a "boutique" item, I suggest installing an oil burner.

IMHO it is close by, reasonably priced, and they sell the smaller quantities largely as a courtesy...if you go in there wanting to determine if the stuff they sell is "good enough" and harass them about analysis, you may screw it up for the rest of us. Their real business is 25 ton lots, but they will sell you a pickup load.

If you want to burn coal and make steam, yes it will do that really, really well, and has all the right smells, but like all soft coal it produces ash and cinders and smoke and sometimes you halfta run a slash bar through it to break it up.

Oil burners are what the OSHA hearing protection laws were created for. I still have ringing in my ears from working on one of those. Never again, I've lost enough hearing for the sake of steam. If I could make it quiet I would but, I've yet to know of a true semi-quiet loco oil burner that works, and working well while being simple is an impossibility, I've seen them all.

Coal does not always have to cover everything around it with black sut, but it usually does. I'll have guests on my rr that I don't want to cover in sut, so thats the reason I'm looking for the ideal coal. The legendary EBT had coal that was more like charcole briguets I guess. I still want to find some good low sut "Boutique Item" hard'ish coal and try not to wear the smoke but, since the price is right, I'll buy some of that Okie coal and try it & I won't ask them for anything and mess it up for the bucket brigade.

Thanks for the info!

There are more kinds of coal than most people would ever guess. It is processed and broken down to usable consistent sizes by a "breaker" plant. This is not an easy or cheap process. Many coal users try to burn "run of the mine" coal which is much cheaper but is not consistent in size and often contains a lot undesirables. I don't know the history of how much processing American railroads were willing to pay for but my guess is that during times when money was tight the quality of coal suffered. I've seen first hand in China that the coal used by the railroads is some of the poorest quality coal I've seen. I would think that American railroads were not too much different.

You can buy coal for a specific mine and that does make a lot of difference. I have fired a lot of coal in my time and have seen soft coal that burns pretty hot and clean, some that burns with a yellow tinge, and some that made smoke when you just looked at the shovel. It goes back to the old saying.. you get what you pay for...

That pic is from a unit that EFM is reintroducing, hand fired boilers are not that popular because the stokers are much easier however there is a small market for them. Full details and a lot of pictures can be found here, see page two about 3 or 4 posts down for the new unit:

http://nepacrossroads.com/about4927.html

EFM might be willing to get you parts if you want them such as the grate assembly. If you really want a source for anthracite you can get it right from the processing plant delivered via tractor trailer and possibly a train car. Right now it costs about $140 to $150 per ton if you pick it up yourself, you'll have to factor in the shipping s. Most places are not dealing with anyone but regular customers at the moment but you'll be able to get it once the weather breaks.

Some of my forum members have built their own boilers for both anthracite and bituminous, you might want to check some of those threads to find out the "gotchas". I don't know how a home fired boiler differs from a train boiler. I thought some of them were nuts building there own but I was wrong. Building your own train with a boiler quite frankly is astonishing and I mean that in a good way.

Is their a lot of people trying to do that?



I know one problem with bit. coal is clinkers which is where the impurities will fuse together and create a molten mass that can be as hard as a rock. One benefit of anthracite and yet another reason it's used for home heating is that it does not do that. The ash will range from a fine powder to a slightly "chunky" mixture that can easily be broken even by hand.

That's the purpose of the movable grates, between the weight of the fresh coal on top of them and the movement everthing will break up and fall into the ash pan below.

Something else you may need to educate your visitors about.

http://comics.com/affiliate/seattle_times/?ComicID=69

Back in the days of steam, the railroads used the cheapest coal they could buy. It didn't make sense for them to buy premium grades as long as their locomotives could make steam. The Pennsylvania used something just slightly more flammable than dirt for freight service, and a coal that was somewhat better for passenger service. Several retired enginemen have told me that when taking a transfer drag from Enola to Harrisburg or Rutherford, they would stop at the Harrisburg coal wharf to replenish their coal supply since the passenger coal burned better.

As for Broad Top coal, the East Broad Top used run-of-mine as long as they owned the mines. I remember seeing lengths of blasting wire sticking out of the stuff that poured out of the chutes into the tender. It was also pretty sulfurous, to the point that one could sometimes see a vein of sulfur in the coal.