Re: [CBQ] Coal fires in cars ?

["John Mitchell via Groups.Io" <icrr1680=yahoo.com@groups.io>]

Spontaneous combustion occurred often in coal cars especially in coal that was loaded out of storage piles. Some companies would even load burning coal out of storage piles to get rid of it. My Grandpa told me that sometimes the dragline bucket   would glow red hot!

On Thursday, January 3, 2019 10:39 AM, Larry and/or Donna Graus <lagraus@charter.net> wrote:

Forgot to add that a cigarette is quite unlikely to set coal on fire. It takes a lot of heat to ignite it.

-----Original Message-----
From: CBQ@groups.io [mailto:CBQ@groups.io] On Behalf Of William Barber
Sent: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 10:39 AM
To: CBQ@groups.io
Subject: Re: [CBQ] Coal fires in cars ?

Leo,

I don’t think that spontaneous combustion was very common it hoppers, but it certainly was a concern with large piles of stored coal. I believe it is the weight of the coal on the portion oat the bottom that tends to ignite. The EMD plant in McCook always had a large coal pile in the back part of the plant which was used for heating purposes. They had a bulldozer assigned to the coal pile to continuously turn it over to prevent such fires. The day that the Titanic started it fateful voyage, there was a fire in one of the coal bunkers that they were battling. This was not an uncommon experience on coal fired ships. I think that, because there is not enough weight in the coal in a hopper car, fires were probably not very common. Of course, the fire could have started from an external source such as a cast off cigarette from a passing train. John Mitchell might have more comments of such occurrences.

Bill Barber
Gravois Mills, MO

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