Coal car

“ Other empty cars are placed in the pit track for loading next day, by a train bound toward the pit the same night the loaded cars were taken out. The work can be carried on from either one or both ends of the cut. Coal cars should never be used if flats can possibly be obtained, as the latter can be unloaded by a gang of men one-third as large as would be necessary for unloading coal cars. ”

“ Coal cars of railroad ownership, other than those assigned to the loading of railroad fuel coal, are known and will be referred to as 'system cars.' Car distribution rules assume importance only in times of car shortage; that is to say, when car orders exceed car supply. To provide for such periods the capacity of such mine is rated in cars per day. A mine may order cars each day up to but not exceeding its rated capacity and in time of a car shortage generally does so (even though it might not actually have equivalent orders for coal) in order that it may get as many cars as possible. ”

“ This powerful machine picks up bodily from the railway track a car loaded with a hundred tons of coal, overturns it, and discharges its contents into the hold of a vessel; after which it returns the car to the track. It is capable of handling fifty cars an hour. It is equipped with special apparatus to prevent the coal from being discharged too violently, and thus being badly broken up. ”

“ The plethora of his coal-bin is more to the credit of his wits than his morals. My mind is fully established in this thing; as a grafter he is the perfected article.
It may, however, be said in excuse for the car shortage, that the demand for coal cars synchronized with that of wheat, the rush for both being in the autumn and early winter. At first, the pioneer coal dealers in the villages and towns throughout the west, had neither the buildings wherein to store fuel nor the money to permit of their purchasing it, so that orders were seldom given until cold weather had actually set in. ”

“ After these separate streams of coal have passed the scrutiny of the picker boys or the test of the picking machine, the shutes in which they run are narrowed into pockets or bins, closed at the end by a gate. The pocket projects over the car track high enough from it for a railroad coal car to stand beneath, and the coal is then fed from the pocket into the car at will. ”

“ Cars were not requested or furnished merely to be used in holding or storing coal, but always to be employed in its immediate transportation. While furnishing some cars for this service, the railroad company failed to furnish as many as the coal company needed and requested. It is plain that supplying the requisite cars was an essential step in the intended movement of the coal and a part of the commerce-whether interstate or intrastate-to which that movement belonged. ”

“ Five assistant road foremen of engines are now at work instructing firemen how to reduce the quantity of smoke emitted by engines. It is estimated that ten pounds of coal were required last year to generate steam necessary to haul one freight car one mile. The safety valve of an engine, if left open one minute, will lose an equal amount of steam. The Pennsylvania Railroad last year hauled 1,248,300 freight cars one mile and its coal bill was $10,000,000. Therefore, the savings of one per cent, by more efficient handling of coal will result in a saving to the company of $100,000 annually. ”

“ It, too, tips the car over on its side so the coal can run out into a chute. Then the machine swings back and lets the car drift downhill.
Locomotives and shops use almost a fourth of all the coal the railroads haul. It takes much less coal now to run an engine than it used to take, because engineers and scientists have thought up ways to make locomotives better and better. They figure things so closely they can even tell how much it costs to blow an engine’s whistle—three toots for a penny. ”

“ In a trial trip on October 3, 1883, from Brighton to London Bridge and back, with an average load of 191⁄2 coaches, or 285 tons gross, and with a speed of 45 miles per hour, the consumption of coal was 31 lb. per train mile, evaporating 8.45 lb. of water per pound of coal, and with as much as 1,100 indicated horse-power at one portion of the run. The finish and painting of these engines is well considered, but the large coupled wheels give a very high shouldered appearance, and as a type they are not nearly as handsome as the single engines previously described. ”

“ Coal! A normal freight load. He climbed back up and looked along the road. No pursuit. An uneasy chill went through him—this was too easy. To ride a coal car to safety, without a single man pursuing him—to where? He examined the billing on the side of the car, and he forgot his fears in the rush of excitement. The billing read, "Consignment: Coal, twenty tons, Markson Foundries, via Pittsburgh private cutoff." ”

“ Without going into details as to what extent the world's output of coal will be affected by the advent of the Diesel motor as a power and heat-producing means, it is safe to say that coal miners will lose their best weapon in the struggle against the oppressing class by it.
When the Diesel motor has supplanted the steam engine of the private and municipal plants, also of railways and steamships, the necessity of coal will be no more of such an imperative nature as it is today. Coal will then occupy but a secondary position in modern industries. ”

“ We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle: and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power. ”

“ Now, when the ordinary locomotive sends particles of coal into the cars in which I am riding, I do not think it would be unfair criticism to say that the process of combustion was not properly carried out. When we see dense volumes of gas emitted from the stack, it is evident that a portion of the hard dollars which were paid for the coal are being uselessly thrown into the air ”

“ Economy, however, should not be carried too far in any branch of the service, and if the passenger traffic be heavy the use of soft coal may be a great detriment. To a traveller there can be nothing more disagreeable than the smoke and cinders emanating from it; and if, besides this, the road be an especially dusty one, the combination of dust, smoke, and cinders will be quite sufficient to turn the tide of travel in some other direction and over another route.
For freight service bituminous coal is decidedly the best, and perhaps might not be out of place on short local passenger trains ”

“ Black men were moving about with flaming lamps at their heads, electric cars came whizzing out of the darkness, drawing trucks of coal. Whole trucks were elevated in the opposite shaft from that in which we had descended, elevated to the pit-mouth with a roar and a rush and a scattering of lumps of coal. I gained a lively realisation of one way in which it is possible to get a coal-bruise. ”

“ If this amount of coal is allowed for the engine and tender, and the balance that is consumed is divided among the cars, it will reduce the quantity for hauling the cars alone to even less amounts than those given above. ”

“ To the importance of coal in our manufactures, therefore, we owe the subsequent development of steam locomotive power as the means of the introduction of passenger traffic, and by the use of coal we are enabled to travel from one end of the country to the other in a space of time inconceivably small as compared with that occupied on the same journey in the old coaching days. ”

“ The use of cranes, hand labour with shovels, wagons and locomotives, horses and carts, is unavoidable for the transit of coal; and labour to trim the coal, to stoke it when under combustion, and to handle the residual ashes, are all indispensable to steam-raising by coal. On the other hand, a system of pipes and pumps, and a limited quantity of skilled labour to manage them, is all that is necessary for the transit and combustion of petroleum fuel ”

“ There is unlimited power there. Why not harness it?
“You are looking,” he pointed at the engine, “upon the motor power of the future. It ran, as you saw a moment ago, on coal dust, a very finely powdered coal dust. A little is let in at a time. A slight ash is formed. This drops out at the top of the cylinder, as you will see the engine runs inverted. It was burning coal dust, but any carbon dust will do. Wood ground fine, wheat dust, peat dust, any carbon dust will drive it. Think what that means to the world-traveler of the future! No more disgusting waiting for gasoline ”

“ For a five-day period in January and for each following Monday for several weeks the Fuel Administration asked commerce and industry to forego as far as possible the burning of coal in order that it might give priority for deliveries of coal to the waiting ships and to the newly established Railroad Administration, struggling with ice-covered tracks, frozen engines and storm-tied trains, a little time in which to relieve the congestion of cars and set in motion long lines of stalled coal trains. ”

“ In a train of 40 cars, the last 8 are dead load that might better have been left in the bowels of the earth. No less an authority than Martin A. Rooney states: "Every fifth shovel full of coal that the average fireman throws into his furnace serves no more useful purpose than to decorate the atmosphere with a long black stream of precious soot. At best one-fifth of all our coal is wasted."
The first requisite toward effecting fuel economy is to secure cooperation between owners, managers, and the men who fire the coal. ”

“ Railway companies very seldom pilfer, but the action of more than one railroad on this continent in appropriating urgently needed steam coal billed to others during the winters of 1917–18, will prepare the reader’s viewpoint for a claim for reimbursement placed in the hands of the Silverplate Road, covering fifty cars of slack coal, lost and being vigorously traced, which that line had seized and hastily dumped into a big washout cavity. ”

“ They are to be found in the facilities conferred by the railway companies, and the great changes that, as the direct result thereof, have taken place in the coal trade itself. Not only are most of the collieries in communication with the railways, but the coal waggons are generally so arranged alongside the mouth of each pit that the coal, as raised, can be tipped into them direct from the screens. Coal trains, thus made up, are next brought to certain sidings in the neighbourhood of London, where the waggons await the orders of the coal merchants to whom they have been consigned. ”

“ Thus a duty of 150,000,000 ft.-lbs. per 100 lbs. good coal is to-day attainable, and two thirds that figure is extremely common. With engines of large size the coal-consumption has fallen to one half, sometimes even to one fourth, the figure in the text.
Hot-air engines are superseded by the gas-engine and the oil-vapor engine; which even threaten, in the opinion of many engineers, to ultimately displace the steam-engine.
Compound and other multiple-cylinder engines, with two, three, and even four cylinders in series, are now always employed where fuel is costly. ”

“ It is not enough merely to save the energy of coal, to relieve the congestion on the freight railroads, and to provide a common-carrier system for high-voltage electricity. There is needed also the more intensive utilization of the fuel supply. The plan of the Superpower Commission regards coal—bituminous coal especially—as nothing more than fuel. The industrial [Pg 96] revolution was built upon the power of coal to fire the boilers in steam engines. But the use of coal for the generation of steam only is almost the least efficient way in which it can be utilized. ”

“ With freight trains consisting of as many cars as a heavy locomotive can draw without difficulty, the consumption of coal will not exceed from [138] 1 to 11⁄2 pounds of coal per car per mile if the engine is carefully managed. It takes from 15 to 20 pounds of coal per mile to move an engine and tender alone, the consumption being dependent upon the size of the engine, speed, grades, and number of stops. ”

“ The loss occasioned by this rapid diminution of the means employed, is serious in every point of view, in regard as well to the quantity of fuel used and time wasted, but it is unavoidable in the operation of decomposing coal in masses or layers from 5 to 10 inches in thickness, and must be a great drawback on the value of the gas-light discovery. ”

“ An important objection to this engine is the one arising from the danger that accompanies the use of coal-oil. The motor itself is indeed quite safe, as much so as the gas-engine, and, if no more oil were stored than that in the tank from which the supply is drawn while working, the danger would be small. But when a considerable quantity is kept on hand in places where there is much valuable property, as in city buildings, the danger is sufficient to warrant increased insurance rates, and in some cases the prohibition of the machine. ”