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All right...you guys have all got coal and fuel stories from different points of view...I'll relate my own which kind of touches on everything that started this whole thread
Re: Small town fuel distribution. On the Rock Port Langdon and Northern at Rock Port there were three fuel oil and gasoline distributors...There was DX, previously mentioned...Standard Oil... and Texaco. These three were all located on what would be called a "Team Track"...or more recently..."Public Track". I can remember seeing tank cars being unloaded at all three of these locations. Also I have copies of my grandfather's correspondence with CB&Q and KCS and/or MKT traffic departments in the 1930's and 40's pleading with them to get a reduction of 5cents per gallon on the freight rate from Tulsa Oklahoma to Rock Port so that "we can get this business back from the truckers"
I also have a copy of an article my dad wrote sometime in the early 1940's regarding the unfairness of the truck compettion to the railroads. He wrote something like this..."As I look out my window I can see a transport truck standing on our (RPL&N) property unloading fuel into a distributor's tanks.
Rich mentioned Sundstrand pumps. My dad became a dealer for Lennox Furnace Company in 1938. Most of his business was in replacing coal furnaces with oil furnaces. The "gun type" burners Lennox used had Sundstrand pumps which were the "cadillac" of the industry. My dad would often boast that "Lennox Furnaces had Sundstrand pumps and that was the very best.
Regarding coal furnaces. During the late 1940's and early 50's many houses in Rock Port still had coal furnaces...some of the old "octupus" style and others of a more modern type with automatic thermostats and blowers..Still they were "coal fired" and had to be cleaned every year. My dad had most of this cleaning business...Guess who was the "Cleaner"????? How I hated that job. I could do two furnaces a day. My dad charged $25.00 for the job..I got $12.50. If you have taken notice of the dress of the old machinists and boiler makers in railroad roundhouse photos you will recall that their dress was less thatn pristine and fastidious. Well I could outdo those guys..I could get dirtier doing one furnace than the average boiler maker over several days. My dad would take me with our "shop vac" and various brushes and hoses to the job site..(somebody's house) and leave me. He would come at noon to pick me up...he was a perfectionist kind of person and would give my cleaning job a "white glove" inspection..Including the tops of all the ducts...If It wasn't clean up there I had to do it over.
He would take me home and I would have my lunch in the back yard...No entering the house in my condition. He would take me back to the next job in the afternoon and repeat the procedure. In the evening I would come home and enter our house via the "cellar door" and take a showier in the basement.
Most of the coal burning furnaces were stoker fired...IRON FIREMAN was the stoker of choice. Most were "hopper feed" ie coal had to be shoveled from the coal bin into the hopper of the furnace. At our house...we were among the last in town to get oil heat....(the old "shoemaker's child syndrome") we had a "bin feed" stoker..All it required was the raking down of the coal occasionally and, of course the daily or semi daily routine of removing the clinkers.
Talk about labor intensive...I often think about how coal was transported from origin to home furnace. After being loaded at the mine, the coal would travel to Rock Port from the coal fields of southern Illinois in open top gondola cars...John Mitchell and I have discussed "Green Mark Coal" previously...their advertising jingle, sung to an Irish melody said..."Upon my soul, this Green Mark Coal, beats any coal I've seen.
The coal would arrive at the team track at Rock Port. The drayman hired by the lumber yard would shovel the coal from the rail car into his truck. He would drive to the lumber yard and shovel the coal off the truck in to the proper bin or pile.
When a customer would call for coal to be delivered to his home this same trucker would shovel the required tonnage onto his truck and drive to the customer's home and then shovel the coal into the customer's coal bin.
Is it any wonder that the oil burning furnace didn't take long to overtake the coal fired variety...We didn't have gas in Rock Port until maybe the late 60's..I don't know whether my dad ever installed any gas furnaces..I think he was kind of afraid of it.
As to railroad use of coal...every small town depot had one or more pot bellied stoves. The coal was stored in a "coal house" located not far from the depot. It was the duty of every operator to leave the next guy with a full bucket or buckets of coal at the end of his trick.
During my days summer of 1958 on the Fairmont-Hildreth local one day in early August the conductor commented..."Well, we'll have the company coal before long"....Well we did..About mid August a gon of company coal arrived at Fairmont for distribution along the line. The first day we took the car to the first station out and spotted it at the coal house. In the next day or so the section gang would fill up the coal house and the car would be be billed to the next Station..probably took a couple of weeks for the coal to make it all the way to the end of the line. I don't know whether it was necessary to deliver more coal before the winter was over or whether one "fill up" would do it for the whole winter season. Late in the game most stations were equipped with oil burning stoves and the fuel was probably purchased locally. Think of all the wasted time by section men and train crews handling company coal as well as the tying up of equipment, but that's the way was done.."Back in the Day"
Pete
-----Original Message----- From: rgortowski <rgortowski@aol.com> To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 1:43 pm Subject: Re: [CBQ] CB&Q Fuel Service Leo,
My first job out of college was at Sunstrand Hydraulics in Rockford, IL in 1983. The company built fuel oil pumps that were put on fuel oil burning furnaces, which still used in Rockford at that time. These furnaces required a serious dealer/delivery infrastructure of truck, and in the past trains, to get the fuel to local dealers who then delivered to the individual houses. The fuel was filled through an exterior filler neck to a large tank, in your basement. I remember one story about a dealer coming to the wrong location and pumping in fuel oil to a disconnected filler neck. It caused quite a mess in the finished basement!
When we were looking for our first house, several houses had these disconnected Octopus type furnaces with a fuel tank still in the basement. Some were in use still.
Rich G.
-----Original Message-----
From: qutlx1 <qutlx1@aol.com> To: cbq <cbq@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Tue, Feb 28, 2012 1:25 pm Subject: Fwd: [CBQ] CB&Q Fuel Service John,
That was a bulk oil dealer. Most likely products were gasoline,diesel,fuel oil,kerosene,etc. It was these types of bulk dealer/distributors that often received multi-compartment tank cars so they could receive from two to five different products in one car. At one time there were many,many hundreds and bulk dealers and thousands of multi compartment cars. Pretty much gone by the late 50s. Standard Oil had a pipeline terminal at Rochelle and from there UTLX tank car were distributed all over the Midwest.
I was told by one old timer of a car moving from Rochelle to the dealer in Shabbona back in the day.
Leo Phillipp
Attached Message
Would anyone know what type of fuel that the Q would deliver to Somonauk? There used to be large tanks that sat on concrete supports and there is an old transfer pump in a shack. It sits on the south side of the ROW.
Thanks,
John Shoener
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