In the power plant world it's long been the practice to blend where possible. Pa. Power & Light's Sunbury Steam Electric Station in Shamokin Dam, Pa. was long touted as "the largest anthracite burning power plant in the world," but from the beginning it always burned a blend of anthracite and bituminous, the blend depending on current market prices and availability. Regional anthracite availability plunged sharply after the Knox Mine disaster of 1959 flooded most of the deep mines in northeastern Pennsylvania, for example.

In recent decades, the blending has not been so much anthracite and bituminous, but high-sulfur and low-sulfur coal to try to meet emissions requirements. I have been told (and someone can correct me) that the Powder River Basin coal seams of Wyoming are lousy BTU value (30-45% lower than bituminous), higher moisture content, and a "dirt-like" quality that just happens to be extremely low-sulfur content, making it ideal for blending with the high-sulfur coal from seams the utilities bought either long-term contracts for or outright ownership years/decades earlier. Good anthracite, Pocahontas, etc. coal, by comparison, is almost worth more as a long-term petrochemical stock than for burning in a locomotive......

And since when is premium anthracite "cheaper and more available" than bituminous? That would be like high-octane gas being cheaper than regular, or road diesel being cheaper even after road taxes are applied. "Does......... not.............. compute........."

...Cheaper and more available than Pocahontas seam No. 3 is right now. Some still use anthracite as a heating source, particularly in Pennsylvania. At $250/ton with a minimum order of three tons, the local hardware store delivered it free, just a phonecall away. (This was just this past winter as well). A few railroads I know are paying 400/ton sized and delivered for bituminous... this after months spent shopping around for a supplier.

Reinforcing the thread topic:

Today's announcement from one of the "Little Trains of Wales," the Welshpool & Llanfair:




Photograph by Joe Gunby

I can understand that mines digging steam coal may not care about fines if it's going to be pulverized but what about the metallurgical market where they coke the coal?

I would think that the coke furnaces wouldn't want fines? Or do they not care? How does met coal perform in a boiler? I know it's high volatile which always seems to do well in my live steam locomotive. Other thought here if the British are pooling together to get a whole boat load they likely have enough leverage in the deal to buy screened and grated? The article said they're looking as far away as Australia so I would think this is a good sized order for more than one railway.

Good question and I’m going to have to ask around. We just lost the last local coke plant (Brown’s Island) or it would have been easy.

Lignite is indeed barely a step above burnable dirt. There were locos that used it, usually blended, but their fireboxes had to be set up with that in mind. Low sulfur is about its only redeeming quality.

Anthracite might work well, provided it’s added at the right time (after the draft is going well on bituminous.) It’s clean-burning high-BTU, just hard to get going unless you use forced draft from something else.

Longwall mine panels are long sections of coal with entries (think roads twelve or more feet wide) on either side and cross it’s where the panel begins and ends. Those are often cut with a conventional miner and crushed at a prep plant on the surface, so that would likely be the best shot at the size needed. It’s not impossible. Someone just needs to know who has the right coal and is ready to move the long wall to the new panel. As for anthracite,
Miss Phoebe Snow, dressed all in white/knows lots about good anthracite. I don’t because our mines once numerous/produced much very good bituminous./I’ll look it up, but not tonight/to make sure that the info’s right.

There are shipping containers for coal and minerals. Baltimore to Liverpool is just over 16 days by sea, so a container should be make 8 roundtrips a year between a Pennsylvania mine and a heritage railroad in England. How many tons of coal does the entire British heritage railway industry use?

The total UK steam heritage coal market is around 35,000 long tons per year, 25,000 for railways, the rest divided among traction engines etc.

Just doing some quick checking on the web - the spot price for central Appalachian coal is almost half of Australian coal. But…. As mentioned previously, I think the problem is logistics. To get suitable sized and quality coal domestically, it seems that you have to go to smaller operators that sell by the truckload or bagged. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the large operations that will load unit trains of the already processed pulverized stuff for modern boilers. I didn’t find anything in between. If you do find someone to sell suitable lump in large quantity, how are you going to ship it? A whole ship load if you can find one that will handle it? Bulk commodity containers hold roughly 40k lbs. each. You’ll run out of volume before you hit the max capacity. Containers will be expensive to use. You need the facility to load them and then truck them to the port. Once they get to their destination, you need a rotary dumper. As best as I can tell, the US isn’t set up to ship the type of coal needed as it was as recently as 50 years ago.

This is all speculation on my part but these are all things that are likely to enter into the equation to ship decent steam coal.

Do like the rubbish industry, use a container with end doors and a chassis that can elevate the other end for dumping.

Thank you. I could not understand why you couldn't just fill up a standard International sized container box with coal and ship it. There's several pieces of equipment that can tip up the end of a container box to help dump it out.

It wasn't that long ago that grain was shipped loose in boxcars.

Brian

I had hardened valve seats fitted into the cylinder head.

Keep in mind that ocean dry bulk containers are not the same as domestic open top containers like the ones you see carrying trash. Ocean dry bulk containers can’t leak fines and they have covers. Containers carrying coal require special handling and placement aboard the ship - they can’t get wet and must be monitored. So, no. It ain’t really that simple. Back when I had a “real” job, I was involved in shipping containers to Europe and Southeast Asia. A fair amount of them were open top and over height (though none dry bulk). Any time something can’t ship in a standard 40’ or 20’ closed ocean container, a plethora of extra charges for handling and placement pile up really fast.

I second this. There seems to be a surplus of ISO boxes in this country, since we don't make anything here anymore and don't ship anything to the far east except money. A skidsteer (Bobcat} should fit in a standard ISO box, and I would think a gypsy mine could be found to load boxes by pushing them full of coal. At the other end they could be unloaded the same way, no special equipment needed.

I've heard that you can buy one ton bags of coal on pallets here in the US.

https://www.railwaygazette.com/freight/containerising-coal-simplifies-the-break-of-gauge/58370.article

https://cargostore.com/coal-carrier-container/

And plenty more at "Shipping Coal in Containers" on Google. Seems as if containerized coal shipping is already a thing. But the question is whether it makes economic sense to ship coal.