Wednesday, February 21, 2018

Coal in California?

The title quotes the question I’m often asked, usually by non-Californians. And many times, when I’ve mentioned coal loads on my layout (that is set on the Central California coast in 1953), I get expressions ranging from amusement to incredulity. Now of course, some of that response is quite sensible. California is not a coal state. Very, very little coal was ever mined in California, and most of it was terrible quality, disappointingly high-ash coal (lower BTU, more ashes to clean up). So the traditional kind of railroad coal traffic, outbound loads from coal mines, was indeed all but non-existent in California by 1953.
     But the other end of coal traffic, coal arriving to consumers, is another story altogether. Coal did arrive from several places outside California, and was used primarily in industrial settings. The biggest user of this coal was the Kaiser steel mill at Fontana in southern California. Most arriving coal in California came from the coal fields in eastern Utah/western Colorado. Carriers were D&RGW, UP, and the Utah Coal Route. For years, this traffic moved predominantly in GS gondolas. In 1952, D&RGW began to buy conventional 70-ton triple hoppers, and I can model those in addition to the GS gons. Here is an example on my layout, using an old Roundhouse offset-side model for the hopper.


But any knowledgeable D&RGW modeler will realize at once that this is a stand-in model at best. The only Rio Grande offset-side hoppers I know of were ballast cars, with longitudinal-dump doors.  The number series of the Roundhouse models, 17000–17199, would represents car built in 1957, although Roundhouse has lettered the model with a 10-48 built date, an entirely imaginary data item. Moreover, the 1957 cars were not offset-side cars. I will eventually replace this model, but it serves for now as an alternative to the familiar GS gondolas in D&RGW coal service.
     Those D&RGW gondolas have long been a modeling challenge, because instead of the very common 40-foot length of such cars on nearly all railroads, D&RGW built most of them 46 feet long. In addition, most of the cars also had distinctive side sheets and trucks. This challenge was met by W&R Enterprises with a brass model, including the right trucks, and I do use one of these cars as part of my coal traffic. It’s shown below.


     The Utah-Colorado coal fields are not the whole story of California coal traffic. There are very interesting published accounts relating to California coal and coke use during miners’ strikes in Utah/Colorado, with coal coming from the southern Illinois coal fields and even from as far away as the Pennsylvania/West Virginia/Virginia area. I will probably model this by occasionally operating C&O or WM or N&W hoppers which are in my fleet; all three roads did have substantial off-road customers for coal, much of it marketed through fuel brokers.
     As I have indicated in previous posts, one important destination for coal on my layout is the facilities of the Southern Pacific itself (this is discussed here: http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2016/06/coal-traffic-on-my-layout.html ). Well into the 1950s, SP still relied on coal for fuel in section houses, depots, roundhouses and other on-line structures, as well as for use in caboose stoves. Accordingly, I will model some coal deliveries. This is the other part of the traffic discussed in the post on my plan for hopper cars ( http://modelingthesp.blogspot.com/2011/03/choosing-model-car-fleet-7-hoppers.html ).
     So my coal deliveries are primarily in GS gondolas, and one interesting example is one of the old Ulrich white-metal models, lettered for the Utah Coal Route (a joint operation of the Utah Railway and the Los Angeles & Salt Lake subsidiary of Union Pacific). This model does not accurately model the prototype, but is similar in appearance. It’s shown here during a run-around move at Shumala on my layout, fully loaded with coal.


      This is my background for a certain amount of coal traffic on my layout, even though the layout is set in coastal California. It’s a far cry from Appalachian railroading, but it suits my locale.
Tony Thompson

7 comments:

  1. The cement industry in California was, and is, a major coal customer. Cement plants use the coal to fire the kilns that roast limestone. The result is "clinker", which is then ground into cement powder.

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    1. True, and something I knew but didn't mention. Perhaps more relevant than Kaiser steel, since that plant is long gone. In my modeling year of 1953, of course, it was going strong.
      Tony Thompson

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    2. When the cement industry used coal to fire their kilns may be in a rather recent period. Until the later part of the twentieth century, many (or most)used oil as the fuel for making cement. I am not sure when the uses of oil began, but I would think that it was fairly early, perhaps when the railroad switched to oil for their locomotives. When the price of oil made it big jump in cost, the cement companies switched to coal. In Southern California you saw rather little coal except for Kaiser Steel and coke for foundries in the 1960s

      Clifford Prather

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  2. Resin printed model available at eBay. Looks good.

    Mike Fleming

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  3. Thanks, Mike. It's also been pointed out to me that the Atlas "Trainman" 70-ton hopper, a 10-post design, is quite similar to the D&RGW cars and is a far better stand-in than the old MDC car.
    Tony Thompson

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  4. The model on eBay is for sale.by the developer. It is the unique gondola like your brass model.

    Mike Fleming

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  5. The Rio Grande purchased 700 of those 46ft "offset" type GS gons in 1922, followed in 1926 by 500 shortened versions at 42ft long, using the more traditional brakeshoe arrangement Vulcan trucks. Jim Eager did a very informative article about the many classes of 8000+ GS Gondolas in the Rio Grande fleet in the 2nd Quarter 2002 Prospector (Rio Grande Modeling & Historical Society Magazine)

    Corey Bonsall

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