1908 - Big Coal Contract Let

[NW Mailing List]

Roanoke Times - April 24, 1908

BIG COAL CONTRACT LET

Norfolk & Western Will Haul 260,000 Tons for Panama This Year

   Friends of the Norfolk & Western will be pleased to learn that the 
concern of Castner, Curran & Bullitt, which handles a large 
proportion of this product of the Pocahontas coal fields, has been 
awarded the contract for furnishing 260,000 tons of coal to the 
Panama Canal Commission. All of this great amount of coal will be 
hauled over the Norfolk & Western. This coal is to be used to supply 
the needs of the government at Panama during the coming year. 
Castner, Curran & Bullitt will begin shipping fuel in a day or so. 
The first steamer to load with this coal - the Norwegian, Fridtjof 
Nansen - is coming in from New York to load at Lambert's Point, Norfolk.
   The Erne Line was awarded the contract for freighting the coal to 
the canal and will use the foreign steamers which they have under 
charter. The total amount of coal sold under this contract was 
360,000 tons. Of this C. C. & B. will furnish 260,000 tons of 
Pocahontas, while the Berwind White Coal Company furnish 100,000 tons 
of New River. This last goes from Newport News and therefore Hampton 
Roads got the whole business.
   This is a notable achievement, since all of the great coal 
concerns in the United States were competitors and there were fifteen 
bidders, some of whom bid slightly under Norfolk. The coal, however, 
was offered under certain specifications which required that it 
should be up to a fixed standard, and Pocahontas, at the price was 
adjudged by the government experts to be the cheapest.
   Each cargo will be sampled by an agent of the Geological Survey 
and the coal will be analyzed and must come up to specifications. The 
securing of this contract by Castner, Curran & Bullitt means that 
nearly three-fourths of one million of dollars will come to the coal 
during the coming year in payment for this coal.
   The fuel will go at the rate of a ship load a week for the next 
twelve months.
   It is pointed out by coal men that Norfolk has come to be as the 
letting of this contract again shows, the leading steam coal port of 
the United States and they anticipate that it shall be in a short 
time the greatest in the world. The completion of the Virginian 
Railway alone will, they say, insure this, even though no more 
railways from the coal fields to that port should be constructed.

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- Ron Davis, Roger Link