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My active duty military time was spent at Ft. Eustis, VA..April-October 1959...so we didn't have to worry about any heating....however the old baracks still had coal stoves for heating...Seems like the US Military was about as far behind as the railroads in updating the heating systems.
I always had a "fire fetish"...if that's what you would call it...I liked to mess around with fires so coal stoves were "right up my alley". I have a wood burning fireplace in my basement family room...people say.."Why don't you put in a gas one...Not me...I like to build fires...In fact I just came upstairs from getting one going for the day.
Pete
-----Original Message----- From: STEVEN HOLDING <sholding@sbcglobal.net> To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Thu, Feb 21, 2013 11:11 pm Subject: Re: [CBQ] Fwd: Inbound cars for Lee center and company coal memories Can not remember anymore where we kept the coal for the "Office" at the Sheepyards. But we had two "pot-bellied" stoves one in the office and the other across the hall in the locker room. Had to keep both warm and the bucket full of coal for the next guy. We worked two shifts Day and Nite with the nite man having to punch the clock out in the barns and also keep the Supt. House fire up. It was the Huge House out by the road with a coal cellar and hot water boiler. I had come from the farm(we used wood) with a huge furnace in the basement and a cook stove in the kitchen so I did not have any problem. Went from the railroad to Uncle Sam Ain't Released Me Yet where I spent three winters at beautiful Ft. Rucker, Ala. with coal furnaces and hot water heaters and walking pneumonia. Use to have to walk thru the yellow mud around the coal storage areas we never had up north.
Steve in SC From: "Jpslhedgpeth@aol.com" <Jpslhedgpeth@aol.com> To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com Sent: Thu, February 21, 2013 11:19:08 AM Subject: Re: [CBQ] Fwd: Inbound cars for Lee center and company coal memories 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
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