UK Coal

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-26849671

The radio 4 news this afternoon stated that coal prices have been falling recently and is blamed for the colliery closures; is this good news for our heritage railways? I doubt it as I bet similar to our petrol prices, the price the consumer pays for coal continues to rise…..

Thoughts….?

 

I guess it depends what type of coal is undercutting the UK stuff. If our coal is being undercut by low quality coal it might actually become more of a problem than anything else if it makes decent coal harder to find, however, if this American coal is high quality and cheaper than before then this should be a good thing for heritage railways.

 

Really stupid question, but does coal have a shelf life? Does it 'go off' after being dug up and become less good?

 

coal doesnt deteriorate with age it still has the same thermal output. however welsh steam coal being friable will deteriorate with frost damage into smaller particles.
i have a shed full of welsh steam coal i use on miniature locos and some of it is 50 years old. when you've used the proper stuff nothing else compares!
this topic is one of considerable importance and vast implications for steam in the UK especially mainline steam. UK locos were designed to burn the higher BTU output of UK coal and GWR locos especially the even higher BTU output of welsh steam coal. they were not designed for sustained performance on low grade coal. foreign designs had larger grates etc to use lower grade foreign coal. i think there will be some serious consequences very shortly.
cheers,
julian

 

Some coals can do 'strange' things. They can seemingly go stale and not burn very well although their constitution hasn't really changed (how can it?) I don't know why. Other coals are subject to such things as spontaneous combustion if left stockpiled for even relatively short periods. If you can, it is a good idea to rotate coal stocks, rather than leave old stock on the ground or in the coal bunker.

 

Only 50 years? Most coals are several million years old! (Sorry, couldn't resist that!) The supposedly wonderful Welsh steam coals could be anything up o 14,300Btu/lb. Most of the steam coals presently used from Scotland, Russia and elsewhere are around 12,800 Btu/lb so ther isn't a huge difference in CV <10%). At the end of the day, though, it is not just the CV that counts; there are a number of different qualities that have to be considered, including, friability, caking quality, propensity to clinker, volatile matter and chlorine content. Personally (and from experience) I never regarded soft Welsh coal as better overall than a Yorkshire or Midlands hard coal.
The term 'steam coal' really means nothing except that the coal isn't suitable for making coke. Put another way, it is no use for making coke, only steam raising in a boiler.

 

What did you have in mind when saying that? (Curious to know....)


On the topic of coal and age, I wonder if it can absorb moisture from the air after it's mined, and if that makes any difference?

Noel

 

Possibly. Perhaps an experiment should be carried out with some coal left in an open bunker and another batch stored in a coal house. It would have to be for a year at least though for the coal in an open bunker to receive a large dose of rain water.
If British prices have fallen then any preserved line that can afford it and has the storage facility, should buy up a large stock now.

 

And where would you store it?

Thinking about our situation, we probably have space to store about 40 tons of coal, and probably use about 20 tons per week. So in other words, we never have more than about two weeks supply available - we simply haven't the space to store more. We certainly couldn't store the 1000 tons or so we use in a year. And from visits I've made to other railways, our loco yard is far from the most cramped in existence - others must be in a much tighter situation.

There is also the issue of dust - the more you handle coal, the more it turns to dust. If you created a 1000 ton pile, by time you got to the stuff at the bottom, it would be pretty awful stuff to fire. Power stations can get round that problem because they use pulverised fuel anyway, but our engines at least seem to like nice lumps!

Tom

 

OT, but Titanic apparently set off with a fire burning in one of her coal bunkers for just that reason.

Edit (still OT). Further reading of testimony at the subsequent enquiry (from one of the very few firemen and stokers who survived the tragedy) confirms the fire was finally extinguished at some time on the 12th, but only after the considerable task of emptying the bunker was completed. Ironically, had they left it to burn, the fire would have been extinguished just a few hours later in any event.

 

I'm not sure we've got a loco able to take 100 wagons up our gradients (or loops long enough!). Nice thought though Maybe 847 ...

Tom

 

Even 6 Wagons worth would make your fortnightly delivery into a monthly one and get you a slightly better rate,
but i doubt that would offset the cost/inconvenience of loading/ unloading wagons unless theres already infrastruture / and people already there to do it.

 

Or the cost of endlessly shunting wagons back and forth between SP (where there is no siding space to store six wagons of coal) and HK! I doubt a few pounds
per ton saving would remotely cover it. In any case, our coal comes in individual lorry loads, so if we bought more at once at a longer frequency, it would simply mean more lorry loads; there isn't really any economy of handling. The lorries would have to be staggered in arrival times because of lack of space in the yard.

Someone will no doubt prove me wrong, but I can't see any line that is going to be able to make a worthwhile saving by buying a large amount of coal all at once. If you want to hedge against future price changes, better to let the coal merchant do that and do a deal with them, as they will be dealing with viably large amounts.

Tom

 

We've just extended our coal storage area at Tunbridge Wells West to increase the loads we can take a delivery of at any one time, given we run Steam on weekends and Thursdays/Fridays during the Summer a small number of deliveries per steam operating year suffices for ourselves. This will now be decreased further given the greater storage capacity.

 

It is weird this phenomenon as you say, I think it is exacerbated because we rarely empty bunkers or tenders fully when in service, so can end up dumping a new load on top of the old stuff so never quite getting into the corners. You can then hit a layer of what feels like stale coal and it behaves differently.

 

I'll quite happily chuck a wheel-barrow load of dust out of a loco bunker rather than light up on dust. I'm also not impartial to jumping into a bunker to clear the old stuff out of the corners before coaling up. The time and effort is usually well spent as it means I start the day with a good fire and don't hit a massive seam of dust and rubbish halfway through the day.

 

Some places might be able to hold more stocks, but can't fit the larger lorries on access road for delivery, so same problem again.

 

But...how many of our Heritage lines are using foreign coal anyway? I thought a number were, mainly using supplies from eastern europe.
Some of the UK produced coal suitable for loco use comes from opencast producers. There was some from Scottish opencast sites, but Scottish Coal ran into difficulties last year, some sites apparently taken over by Hargreaves, not sure what the level of production of suitable coal is like now. There is also the "Fros-y Fan" (excuse spelling) opencast site in S. Wales.

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