Domestic coal onesy-twosy handling question

[NW Mailing List]

Mines would order empties by car capacity back when empties were still 
classified in Bluefield. As the retail coal business declined, the yard 
classification stopped, but at certain mines, mine run crews would still 
try to sort 50-tonners onto tipple tracks for the graded/house/small 
lump coal and 70-tonners to the slack track (slack coal, also referred 
to as "bug dust").

Once loaded, unsold coal could be stored at the tipple as "no-tags", but 
no more than 25% of the mine rating. More than that or to avoid blocking 
off the tipple, loads could be tagged for movement to storage. Outbound 
loads were sorted at the tipple by direction and blocked. Loads could be 
stored nearby, particularly if they could be routed later in either 
direction. Storage locations included River (Bluestone), Pocahontas 
Branch main (later), Eckman Yard, Vivian (Kimball Yard), and Huger 
Middle Track if Superior was slow. "House" coal was blocked as short 
loads to terminals where they were billed and handled as general freight.

Grant Carpenter

On 3/15/2017 2:40 PM, NW Mailing List wrote:
> WJP:
> This is not the whole answer, but commercial coal agents would send loads
> of yet unsold coal to terminals such as Portsmouth, Roanoke, Potomac 
> Yards.
> Consigned to the coal agent, the cars would layover until  some company
> needed coal in a hurry or a "mom and pop" coal dealer ordered a car.
> The cars were known in the trade as "rollers".  When a buyer was found,
> a diversion was issued and the through rate (cheapest) was protected 
> provided.
> the cars didn't go more than 10% out-of-route.
> The consistency of commercial coal was different from utility coal and 
> most export
> coal, therefore it wasn't included in unit trains and export coal for 
> Lamberts
> Point and had to be handled as if it were merchandise traffic. 
> Bluefield would make
> a preliminary classification segregating export coal from utility coal 
> and commercial
> coal.  After 1959, commercial coal for connections at Norfolk was set 
> off at Portlock,
> so it had to be divorced from coal for Lamberts Point.  Although a 
> merchandise
> train, No. 84 would fill to the tonnage rating with commercial coal 
> including the
> onesy-twosys.  No. 84 even had a Norfolk-NS classification (coal for 
> Beaufort
> County (NC) schools. Harry Bundy
On 3/14/2017 7:26 AM, NW Mailing List wrote:
> Once, nearly every town in the USA and Canada had a dealer or two 
> receiving carloads of coal. Can any of you explain how the coal was 
> handled mine to retailer? Were certain mines oriented to this trade? 
> Were they selling direct to coal yards or did brokers take multi-car 
> lots and re-sell in regional areas? (Did N&W coal make it to places 
> like Newfoundland and deliver on narrow gauge trucks?) Has this been 
> covered in one of the magazine issues?
>
>     WJPowers
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