I'm surprised if very fine coal was shipped in hoppers. I
can imagine some moisture (rain or snow) followed by a hard
freeze would turn that entire load into a solid block of
ice! (Larger size coal was far less likely to freeze solid
because of the air spaces between the chunks.)

Tim O'Connor



At 7/10/2009 01:03 PM Friday, you wrote:

Al Kresse:

Nobody has mentioned "stokers" for their furnaces. The 1935 "Stoker Coal, C&O Lines" booklet I was referencing showed home furnaces with a box on the side of of the furnace that automatically feed the furnace . . . . and with the entire family playing in the basement around the clean furnace.

We had a stoker on our coal furnace. Our house was completed in the summer of 1942 so the furnace dated from that time. IIRC the stoker was mounted on the side of and open to the coal bin. It was gravity fed, so the only time you had to actually shovel coal was when the level got way down in the bin. Since my dad was the coal dealer, and the shoveler if it came to that, he made sure the bin was always full. I don't think nut coal (the largest we carried) would work in household stokers. I think we burned rice. In any event, I shouldn't think sizes smaller than nut (the previously mentioned pea, rice and buckwheat) would heap well in a hopper, so a load of such coal might appear flatter and have a much finer texture than what we modelers are used to seeing.

Tom Madden