Re: [CBQ] Fwd: Inbound cars for Lee center and company coal memories

[Jpslhedgpeth@aol.com]

Speaking of Company Coal...let me put in my 2 cents worth of memories.

 

Working the Fairmont-Hildreth local summer 1958 one day...probably about the middle of August the Old Head Conductor remarked..."Well, we'll be gettin the company coal before long"...Sure enough along about the end of August there appeared in the yard at Fairmont a flat bottom gon of "company coal".  

 

Remember this is in the wanning days of the "manned" station at just about every town and every station was heated by means of the traditonal  "Pot bellied" stove or some other coal fired device.  To accomodate the fuel for these devices each station "sported" a "coal house" or shed not far from the station building. 

 

The company coal moved from station to station via the local freight...In our case...the only train...The first day we took the coal to Shickley and it stayed there a couple of days while the section men unloaded the contents via  scoop shovel into the coal house.  When the car had done its work at Shickley we had a message on the next trip or so to pick up this car and take it to Ong...The routine continued until all the stations on the line (Ong, Nelson, Blue Hill, Bladen, Campbell, Upland and Hildreth) were supplied with fuel for the upcoming winter season..

 

I have no idea whether another "way car" of coal was needed before the winter ended, but I often thought and wondered how much time and manpower was taken up with this activity and what the actual cost was.....However this is the way  "we've always done it" and it continued at least through 1958...I'm reasonably sure that it wasn't long after this time that the stations still having an "on site" agent were supplied with an oil stove for heating.....and not long after that there were no stations...agents...or stoves as the Mobile agent concept came along in the 1960's.

 

Well, I'm just keeping up my reputation by continuing my propensity to expound on stuff like this brought about by something, kind of unrelated that reminded me of something else...My late wife often said.."Everything reminds you of something"...I think that's true and hold that concept in high regard and evidence of a fertile and active mind, unimpeded by advancing age.

 

Pete

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: STEVEN HOLDING <sholding@sbcglobal.net>
To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wed, Feb 20, 2013 10:42 pm
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Fwd: Inbound cars for Lee center

 

The load of Company Coal that was unloaded around the stockyards at Montgomery in 1967 was in a 55 or 65 foot mill gon.  That is also what we used for the loads out of there to the strip mines where all the company refuse went.
Steve in SC

---

From: "John D. Mitchell, Jr." <cbqrr47@yahoo.com>
To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, February 20, 2013 2:40:09 PM
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Fwd: Inbound cars for Lee center

 

Most of the remaining gons were in company coal service. The coal company shippers almost always ordered 55 ton hoppers for coal yards and other retail dealers. Retail dealers didn't like to hand shovel the coal that didn't dump out the doors. This was several tons. Places that unloaded with a clamshell liked the gons, also. These were mostly industrial companies. 

--- On Wed, 2/20/13, qutlx1@aol.com <qutlx1@aol.com> wrote:

From: qutlx1@aol.com <qutlx1@aol.com>
Subject: [CBQ] Fwd: Inbound cars for Lee center
To: cbq@yahoogroups.com
Date: Wednesday, February 20, 2013, 12:24 PM

 

Mark,

 

I missed answering one of your questions. By the 50s the composite gons were pretty much retired. There were some but not many. So coal would have been in the 50 ton hoppers and maybe a 70 but those newer hoppers were probably in utlility and industry coal.

 

Leo

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