loading coal cars


railBuilderDhd

railBuilderDhd

Active Member
I've got myself a can full of coal and want to create loads for my coal cars but I'm fishing for ideas on how to bust the coal into scale chunks of coal for the load. Would the chunks be a uniform size or not? Would I be able to just bust up the coal with a hammer to get scale coal chunks? Any thought ideas or info on coal load prototype would be great.
Thanks,
dave
 
Coal in normally shipped in a uniform size. Different cars could have different sizes, but each car would be full of the same size.

The exception to this would be coal shipped from a mine to a crushing complex for sizing and re-distribution. You could have more size variation in cars going into the crusher, but the processed coal going out would be of uniform size.
 
What kind of coal do you have? Is it black and shiny or more brownish and dull? If it's black and shiny, it's anthracite and really hard, with sharp edges. The dull looking coal is bituminous and much softer and easier to break. You can put a piece in some heavy canvas and whack at it with a good hand sledge. The problem is that it will never look like HO scale coal, just like smaller pieces of big coal. Give it a try if you want but I think you'll end up buying some Woodland Scenics coal for loads after you whack at the real coal for a while. :)
 
ThoroughBreed said:
I was actually thinking of using the charcoal from fish tank filter system, anyone ever did that?:cool:
Click to expand...

Yes, some of the coal cars that I filled today were fish tank coal. Later on this week I'll post a few pics of my 33 coal cars that I loaded today. I was going to post a thread for the same reason, but a coincidence of your thread makes mine obsolete. LOL
I also used coal from N & O scale. The O scale coal was given to me in a large bag & I put it inside an old leather welding glove & busted it up into smaller chunks. I also had some plastic coal that I got under an overpass in Bradenton, Fl. about 2 years ago. Don't think it was supposed to be coal, but it sure looked like it. It was by the juice plant RR siding. I got enough to fill 1000 coal cars in HO.

Larry
 
I was thinking of using the coal from fish tank filters but the coal I got was free. I've busted up some of the coal and it was not hard to do at all. What I need to figure out now is a way to keep the coal the same size. I tried to use some screen I had to sift the coal with but I need to figure out a better way sine that only separates the dust from the chunks and I need to do more than that. Ideas?
 
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