Time to load a Coal train? - Trains Magazine
Like CShaveRR says above, "tipple" is so very "passe". It went out of use with the Alleghenies in the east. Modern large volume coal mines use "silos" or "loadouts" now, two words for the same thing. When will the modelling craft catch up?
The gentlemen that indicate there is "continuous loading" as well as those "flood loading" are correct. In some continuous loading operations, the hoppers have an extended lip on one end that projects over the end of the next car. Prevents losses between cars, but not over the edge.
At some mines, the coal is blended as it goes into the cars. The entire train of blended coal is normally destined for a single customer, and quality control is extremely tight. Gotta meet those EPA emissions regulations, ya know!
For general interest, there was an article in Mining Engineering a few years back, 2000, maybe 2001, that highlighted coal RR operations in the PRB. Amazingly, the Powder River Basin ships one million tons of coal DAILY! That's almost 100 trains per day. A recent article on Trains or somewhere said that for 2005 the coal mines in Wyo will miss their target because the RR's cannot ship fast enough. But the BNSF plus the UP hit 350,000,000 tons shipped! And missed the mines target! The mines had targetted 385,000,000. At $40/ton, that is $15,400,000,000 worth of coal. Big business!
Oh, one more correction of the verbage. Coal is not "ore". Never has been "ore". "Ore" is a rock that contains both economically valuable minerals (metallic or non metallic) that must be extracted from the ore, and worthless minerals that are disposed of. Coal is 100% value. Coal is burned. Ore is not. Coal is also not technically a mineral, it is an organic substance.
Yeah, I sound a bit snobbish, but I'm a geologist and have been mining for 29 years now.
