Hopefully you will be able to view this in the US....
https://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2022- ... uel-supply

That won't work because you are intending to send the containers by ship and there are international maritime standards for dangerous goods -- no shipping company is going to accept a dry goods container stuffed with loose coal.

You need to use a container designed and certified for the service, like the one Rick linked to, or Mineral Concentrate Rotainersor High Cube Rotainers

I checked shipping schedules; there is relatively frequent and direct service between Baltimore and Liverpool. Travel time is 18 days one way, so a container could hypothetically make 9 cycles a year from a Pennsylvania mine to a UK heritage railway and back again. Assuming a single container can move 30 tons of coal it would take a fleet of 130 containers to supply the 35,000 tons that the UK market reportedly needs per year.

Not to derail this thread, but I suggest that you do some research and correct this incorrect assumption.

We might not make low value crap, but we still make plenty of stuff.

https://www.uschamber.com/co/start/stra ... businesses

https://www.americanmanufacturing.org/made-in-america/

https://www.aei.org/carpe-diem/separate ... last-year/




https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufactu ... n_overview

.

I don't know the answer to that TBH - It just seems that nobody even considers the US (or Canada) as a source of coal and one which is a lot nearer than the likes of Australia.
If there is North American coal that is suitable for use in UK locomotives, it seems a logical place to be looking......
I know some of the Polish & Russian stuff that has been used here in the past produced rather a lot of smoke and has not combusted particularly well in the firebox - causing damage in some cases.

As an aside - the rail preservation site I'm involved with which steams a small tank engine generally once a month from April to October has managed to secure enough coal to last them about another 6 years.......!!

In theory, it has NEVER "made sense" to "ship coal." This is why they built coal-burning power plants near the mines when possible, not near the places that consume the electricity--an extreme case being the (now gone) power plant served by the Black Mesa & Lake Powell in northern middle-of-nowhere/Navajo Reservation Arizona, selling power to Phoenix and Las Vegas. It's also part of why railroads built/bought out lines to otherwise oddball and far-flung places, like NYC lines to central Pennsylvania or deep West Virginia, or the Milwaukee Road's line to southern Illinois' coal fields. (I just read an account stating that nineteen percent of the NYC traffic out of its central Pa. lines in the early 20th Century was fuel for its own locomotives.)

But just as we ship tankers of "light sweet crude" from the Middle East to the East Coast because it's still cheaper than shipping and refining much of the North American crude (and never mind pipeline or train problems with that volatile stuff), so too do we ship trainloads of low-sulfur Powder River Basin "dirt" halfway or more across the nation to blend with local high-sulfur coal to "pass emissions."

What matters is the product and whether it works. Ross Rowland, in his AFT/Chessie days with 2101 and 614, stated he paid a premium, about three to four times the regular spot price, for coal to be shipped to his locos from one specific seam in West Virginia, based on its superior quality and reliability. I'm certain the same strategy applied to UP when they used coal in 3985 (before the lineside fires).

When your public relations and business reputation depends on not blocking the main line or stopping for half an hour to build up pressure because the local dealer dumped a load of "burnable dirt" on you or the Burro Crane clamshell grabbed ballast, ciders, and/or slag along with your fuel, it's a small premium to pay. Just like the race drivers/speedboat racers buying special high-octane gasoline for their money-makers.

For hundreds of years, the UK was a major exporter of coal, to many destinations in Europe and elsewhere. Now the UK has to import coal, and there is panic. Coal has been shipped by sea, long distances, for hundreds of years. The movement of coal is largely a function of cost, labor rates, and currency exchange rates. That is, if the value of the dollar is low relative to EU currencies, then it becomes suddenly cost effective to ship USA coal to EU. Economic factors completely unrelated to coal can suddenly make coal trade from USA to EU impractical, but the opposite is also possible.

Someone mentioned UK heritage railways and traction engines needing 35,000 tons a year. Looks like that's s medium sized bulk freighter and a nice mine to dock unit train but doable if all nu units conversions from tons to dry tons etc are correct. I wonder if one bulk freighter would be better than containerized coal? Granted once in country you sill need to truck it everywhere.

Well, crud, my connection crashed when I tried to post the big list with all the explanations. Try this link for an anthracite supplier that can do what the U.K. will need:

https://lehighanthracite.com/anthracite-coal-sizes/

Whatever gets moved should go soon, before summer heat and hurricanes hit, and the coal needs to be kept DRY. Sixteen days at sea is enough to get bituminous thinking about mischief if it’s damp. I found a lot of historic accounts of blended burning, mostly confirming that anthracite needs the draft already running. If I can find the chart again, there’s a good one showing the uses and qualities of everything from durn near diamond to “that looks like dirt.”

Next:

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-dorset-62241336



More at the link.

That quoted figure of £355 per Tonne for coal seems remarkably low compared with what was supposed to be the current "going rate" of £650/Tonne that I was told last Saturday.
A group I'm involved with has been offered 55 Tonnes of the stuff at a seriously competitive price by a Coal Merchant who is clearing out his yard. That'll keep their loco in steam for the usual once a month summer operations for the next 14 years!!
Just a question of where to put it all now....