At 12:50 PM 8/18/05, Tim O'C wrote:

> Why was so little anthracite used in the midwest, compared

to NY/NJ/PA?

It is easy to forget that Illinois was a large coal producer (is it still?), and at one time there were a fairly large number of producing coal mines in Iowa (a mine on Iowa family land lasted into about 1960). One would presume that the cost of the local product would probably shut out another shipped from 1000 miles away. I do know that in our Iowa and Chicago family homes, coal disappeared like snow in the mid-day sun as a heating fuel about 1940-41, to be replaced in each instance by oil- which at that point must have become economically competitive.

Is/was anthracite ever shipped to the Midwest? I presume that it must have been on special occasions. Wasn't there a thread on this list several years ago about photos that showed D&H hoppers (or similar) full of anthracite in Waukegan or another of the Lake Michigan cities, the fuel required to fire a power plant that was under some sort of smoke abatement ordnance?

For a number of years until at least 2000, we also would buy small amounts of bulk anthracite coal in rural northwest Iowa to burn in my brother's steam launch (when more photogenic smoke was desired than could be ordinarily produced by the usual white oak firewood). Although we drew from a big pile, I never knew whether it was delivered by truck or hopper (the yard had an active adjacent siding- now gone, along with the railroad)

For the seven years that I lived in the New England far north, I heated the house primarily with anthracite coal, trucked up from PA. Every year, I would burn seven tons, all hand fired (by me) once a day in the morning. It is actually pretty wonderful stuff. Clean, a LOT of heat, relatively little ash, but hard as heck to get going from a cold start.

Denny

Ya know, unless you're using thousands of the things,
it takes about 5 seconds to make a corner grab with a
pair of pliers and a piece of wire. There are many sizes
on the prototype cars, but only a couple of sizes made
for HO scale.

Same thing with cut levers. Practice and you can get it
down to about 10 seconds.

Tim "now where did I leave my pliers?" O'Connor

So basically all model cars should weigh about the same according to length? That's why a 40 ft flatcar would weigh the same as a 40 ft boxcar? Maybe THAT's the reason that one wood, kit-built boxcar I had kept derailing regardless of changing trucks and fine-tuning all surfaces. I wasn't too closely concerned about car weights at that time.

I would still assume though that the scaling of weight per prototype weight is not wrong, just impractical.

Paul Hillman

The corner grabs I have are made by Tichy. I don't recall if they are
equal leg or not. So I can't say whether they are the same as either of
those you have. They are made from a hard copper .010 wire.

regards,

Andy Miller

Sometime ago I purchased several packages of corner
grabs for running boards. There were two styles of
grabs. in one of the packages the legs on the corner
grabs were equal in length. The other style, in
another package; one leg was longer then the other.

I am trying to find out who manufactures the second
style of grab. The short leg of the corner grab would
be over the side of the car. Any help would be
appreciated.

Bruce

Bruce R. Brantner, Sr.
Coyote Trails RR
Coyote Div. of SF RR

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On Thu, August 18, 2005 11:47 am, Paul Hillman wrote:

Tony,

HUM!!!??? That just brought up another interesting thought to me. Wouldn't
it be more true to scale-weight then, to know the prototype-car's empty
weight, divide that by the cube of 87.1, (or some other scale ratio) and
weight the car accordingly, rather than per the NMRA tables, eventhough
they're a pretty good, "ball-park" figure?

Only if you want to model empty cars! Then, as pointed out in another
post, mixing widely differing car weights causes problems on the real RR,
and with our exagerated curves and grades, these are multiplied. There
are modelers who compromise somewhere less than NMRA RP weights, often
50-75% of these.

Regards
Bruce
Bruce Smith
Auburn, AL

Tim Gilbert wrote:

timboconnor@... wrote:

Great coal data, Tim!

Why was so little anthracite used in the midwest, compared
to NY/NJ/PA? I thought that people really liked burning that
sort of coal in their furnaces. Were there sources of anthracite
closer to OH/IN/IL/MI etc or did the people there just burn
regular bituminous (or low sulfur bituminous) at home? Was
it so expensive to ship anthracite by rail from PA to Ohio?

Je ne sais pas.

Tim Gilbert

Tim,

Upon further review, I remember that in 1966-67 when I was living in a
basement apartment in Marietta OH, the apartment was heated by a rather
archaic open flame gas heater: - the gas being piped in (vs. a propane
tank). That gas heater was a cast iron antique even in 1967. I don't
remember whether the gas was natural, or provided by a gasification
process. The coal mined locally in southeastern Ohio did have a high
sulfur content.

Tim Gilbert

Don't forget that you will have to think on the locomotive drawbar pulling power also.
Precision scale and Intermountain makes wheel sets with ball bearings and don't forget to replace the coil springs on the steam locomotives bearings .
The correct springs allows you to raise one driving wheel without lifting the locomotive.
Doing that you garantee that all drivers have the same adesion tp the track and you will pull twice as much cars.
Marcelo Lordeiro

Paul, model trains do not perform like real trains.
For one example, the weight of the car on the rail
is distributed over an area larger by a factor of 87.1.
(The surface area of contact between the wheel and
rail only changes in 2 dimensions as you scale down.)
Also, our curvature is usually about 10 times as sharp
as you'd find on a prototype. If you put 1 oz cars with
5 oz cars in a train and run it up a 3% grade with 40
degree curves, then don't be surprised when you get
"stringlining" of cars in the middle of the train.

There must be a FAQ out there somewhere... try the
LDSIG mailing list.

Tim O'Connor

Well, get to work then! :-)

Tony,

HUM!!!??? That just brought up another interesting thought to me. Wouldn't it be more true to scale-weight then, to know the prototype-car's empty weight, divide that by the cube of 87.1, (or some other scale ratio) and weight the car accordingly, rather than per the NMRA tables, eventhough they're a pretty good, "ball-park" figure?

Paul Hillman

timboconnor@... wrote:

Great coal data, Tim!

Why was so little anthracite used in the midwest, compared
to NY/NJ/PA? I thought that people really liked burning that
sort of coal in their furnaces. Were there sources of anthracite
closer to OH/IN/IL/MI etc or did the people there just burn
regular bituminous (or low sulfur bituminous) at home? Was
it so expensive to ship anthracite by rail from PA to Ohio?

Je ne sais pas.

Tim Gilbert

Tony & Tim,

OK, thanks. I see where I erred, in scaling down only 1 dimension of a 3 dimensional object.

Paul Hillman

Great coal data, Tim!

Why was so little anthracite used in the midwest, compared
to NY/NJ/PA? I thought that people really liked burning that
sort of coal in their furnaces. Were there sources of anthracite
closer to OH/IN/IL/MI etc or did the people there just burn
regular bituminous (or low sulfur bituminous) at home? Was
it so expensive to ship anthracite by rail from PA to Ohio?

Tim O'Connor

Tony

ABS == Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene
^^^^^^

Sheesh. You can take the professor outta
the classroom, but...

Tim O.

Keith Jordan wrote:

Does anyone know how stainless steel was shipped in the early 1950s? Coils?
Sheets? Boxcars? Flats? Gons?

I don't know a lot of details on this, but I'd say the answer is "yes."

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Tim O'Connor wrote:

Brake fluid . . . ATTACKS rubber -- many styrenes
include a form of rubber in them (e.g. Kato, AHM) which is why
they become weak and brittle.

Not styrene, but ABS, has rubber particles in it (the "B" stands for butadiene).

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Paul Hillman wrote:

Say, in HO scale, 87.1:1, we physically scale-down the prototype
dimensions by that ratio. What if the car were built of the exact same
materials as the prototype, would the weight scale-down by 87.1 also?

No, it would scale by the volume, which goes as the cube root of the scale. That would make it roughly 1.5 to 2 ounces.

Tony Thompson Editor, Signature Press, Berkeley, CA
2906 Forest Ave., Berkeley, CA 94705 www.signaturepress.com
(510) 540-6538; fax, (510) 540-1937; e-mail, thompson@...
Publishers of books on railroad history

Ben,

The 1957 book AMERICAN COMMODITY FLOW (1957) by Ullman has maps showing what states terminated Anthracite and Bituminous Coal mined in Pennsylvania in 1950, and what states mined Bituminous Coal for consumption in Pennsylvania (no other state mined Anthracite consumed in PA). Pennsylvania was the only state in Ullman's book where the origins & destinations of coal was cited; for other states, the Products of Mines tables are the closest alternative which may not be that good.

First, the destination by states (or regions) of Coal mined in PA.

(000's of Tons) Anthracite Bituminous
1950 Tons % Total Tons % Total
North N Eng. 742 2.5% 450 0.8%
South N Eng. 2,832 9.4% 2,435 4.2%
New York 9,367 31.0% 16,428 28.6%
New Jersey 7,713 25.5% 8,997 15.7%
Pennsylvania 7,551 25.0% 15,697 27.3%
DE, MD, DC, VA 865 2.8% 2,388 4.1%
West Virginia 23 0.1% 44 0.1%
Ohio 176 0.6% 10,565 18.4%
IL, IN, MI, WI 933 3.1% 404 0.7%
FL, AL, TN, TX 35 0.1% -0-
MN, IA, MO, CA 47 0.2% -0-
Total 30,249 100.0% 57,408 100.0%

1) In terms of coal fields, Anthracite was mined in Northeastern Pennsylvania while Bituminous was mined in the Western part of the state.

2) These figures represent the states where all-rail transport from Pennsylvania terminated. The figures do not measure where the coal was consumed. The table measures only where hoppers (or gons) loaded with PA-mined coal were terminated.

3) Some of the PA Coal mined was delivered to ports for transshipment into barges or ships for transport to other states. In terms of where the consumers were the figures for New York may be bloated for transshipment at Sodus Point NY for points in Ontario (plus the transfer of hoppers at Rutland's Albergh NY Trestle). Transshipment of PA Coal at Erie and Ohio's Great Lake Ports for destinations on the Upper Lakes bloated the Pennsylvania and Ohio Terminating Tonnage at the expense of states served by the Upper Lake Ports. New Jersey's figures may have been bloated by transshipment across the Hudson River to New York and Connecticut. Exports of Coal through Atlantic Ports may have bloated PA's & NJ's tonnage. It is difficult to assess how much of the individual tonnage for particular states includes transfers to barges & ships - nor are these tonnages being placed on barges at or near the mines for transit down the Ohio River to other states included.

4) Any all-rail transit to Ontario via Buffalo or Suspension Bridge is not reflected in the table.

5) States not cited in the table above did not receive any all-rail shipments of PA Coal. This means that "Other States" could have received PA-mined Coal after the coal was loaded into barges and ships, and then back into hoppers (& gons) at another transshipment point.

24,588,000 tons of Bituminous Coal were terminated in Pennsylvania of which 15,697,000 tons (63.8%) were mined in Pennsylvania. Other states originating Bituminous Coal were West Virginia (7,693,000 tons or 31.3% of the total); Maryland (466,000 tons or 1.9%); Kentucky (384,000 tons or 1.6%); Ohio (274,000 tons or 1.1%); Virginia (50,000 tons or 0.2%) and Tennessee (24,000 tons or 0.1% of the total). There is no distinction within Pennsylvania where this Bituminous Coal was terminated - Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc..

Tim Gilbert

Given the fact that color tests and evaluations are no more associated with steam era frt cars than, say, Wolverton Mountain is, that subject is now terminated on the STMFC...unless a member ties such a subject directly to a steam era frt car.

I would also request that when members wish to reply to a subject that they KNOW is out of scope please do it NOT to the entire group but, rather, to the member writing the out of scope message. What is out of scope? Simple. This is in scope:

"... all aspects of North American
standard gauge freight cars of the steam era [ 1900-1960 ]. The objectives
include the sharing of
information about railroad freight cars including their operation, cargos,
distribution and the various techniques of building
models of them. Emphasis is to be placed on the study of the prototype with
a goal of producing models of them with as great a degree of accuracy as
possible.

Announcements about prototype modeling events is within scope.

ALL SUBJECTS OTHER THAN THOSE DIRECTLY ASSOCIATED WITH STEAM ERA FREIGHT
CARS ARE PROHIBITED FROM MEMBER MESSAGES."


And, since matters pertaining to Ebay are not associated with steam era frt cars in particular, that subject is now terminated on the STMFC.

Mike Brock
STMFC Owner