I can tell you loads about Utah coal, right down to monthly carloadings.  But instead I refer you to what I said: “…wasn’t much coal west of the Mississippi as compared to the east, hardly any relatively”.   Below is the ICC origin  (red) and destination states (Blue) for rail shipped Bit Coal in tons, lifted from a spreadsheet of mine that does pivots.  Be sure to use a magnifying class to guestimate production numbers from west of the Mississippi.

Dave Nelson

Dave,

Useful data.  What year do the data represent?

Jim van Gaasbeek

Irvine, CA

1950.  I transcribed all of the state to state commodity shipments, put it into a database, and then built a pivot table to read that database and produce the chart I posted.  As for interesting, it’s ok.  I did a similar project for the April 1950 ORER that’s much more interesting.

Thinking… I recall the largest commodity shipped from Washington D.C. was scrap paper.  No surprise actually.

Dave Nelson

No, but I suppose I could poke around with this to see what comes up.

Dave Nelson

Ted, from 1950.

Dave nelson

That explains why some of the midwestern production is so small, especially in Iowa. The Southcentral Iowa coal fields had played out shortly after the turn of the 20^th century, and coal production in Southern Illinois was greater during the first 30-40 years of the 20^th century. The Q owned mines in Illinois, and almost all of the coal was shipped in composite gondolas until the late 1940s when steel was gain available to build hoppers.

Nelson Moyer

Someone mentioned era on this thread and that is a valid point. If you check ORER listings between 1905 to 1919, you will find many drop bottom gondolas among the fleets of the big three eastern rail lines; B&O, NYCL, and PRR.

As an example from the October 1919 ORER, the B&O listed 8,108 gondolas in their O-18 class. These were 41-foot, 5-inch interior length, all-steel gons with drop bottoms built in 1912-1913.

But wait, there’s more! In the same ORER, the B&O lists 2.990 40-foot, 6-inch interior length, all-steel gons with drop bottom doors in the O-17 class. These were 1906 products of Pressed Steel Car company.

They also had 34-foot interior length, all-steel gons with drop bottom doors in a couple classes. The O-12 class was built in 1899 and . 1,393 cars are listed in the 1919 ORER. The 1901-built O-14 class had similar dimensions with 1,723 cars listed.

Granted, the B&O did list more hoppers at this time (31,000), but these 14,214 cars in four gondola classes were a significant part of their coal hauling fleet.

You can find similar drop bottom steel gons on the Pennsy listings. Many of the GS design cars were built with drop doors or shallow hopper bottom doors. Bob McGlone shared his work upgrading a Bowser plastic kit to follow the GSa class cars with shallow hopper bottom doors.

http://designbuildop.hansmanns.org/2019/05/17/updating-a-bowser-gs-gondola/

A review of the NYC gons built before 1920 on the Canada Southern site will unearth quite a few examples used on the Central lines.

These gon fleets noted are often overlooked because the associated hopper fleets are HUGE. It’s also the type of car we associate most with eastern coal mining. In reviewing the western gondola fleets, some of you had noted how those lines had few hoppers. With that imbalance, the gondolas will stand out more.

Era and context are two elements to keep in mind when this type of question arises.

Eric Hansmann

Murfreesboro, TN

I model a southern Kansas. There were coal dealers and grain elevators that received coal in gondolas because they used human power to unload them. They would pull their pickup truck beside the gondola and shovel the coal into them. They also had coal bins beside the track with big flap doors that were lifted up and coal shoveled into the bins for later sales.  The elevator at Moline, KS, received a total of 3-4 gondolas a year, primarily for government buildings and schools.

J. Stephen Sandifer

Chuck here are some URC drop bottom gons hauling logs. Demonstrating the versatility of a gon over a hopper.

Doug Harding

https://www.facebook.com/douglas.harding.3156/

Youtube: Douglas Harding Iowa Central Railroad