Coal operations: Dedicated consignees

 After the op session on the LN EK this last weekend Al Daumann forwarded me a scan of the coal routing diagram from the LN EK Div.


It illustrates the routing of coal loads from the various points on the layout to their off layout destinations, and it diagrams the routing of the returning MTYS.
The main point I picked up was that each mine had a dedicated consignee. 

The LN EK lives in 1971.
The AIR exists in 1952.

It is fairly common knowledge that major industries established mines, or mining companies to insure their supply of coal. Some railroads owned coal companies so their supply of fuel was not hindered. Knowing this would it be plausible to dedicate the entire production of a Tipple to Republic Steel each session, session after session?

In 1952, however, there was a much larger residential and light commercial market for coal. These customers were supplied by their local fuel dealers who purchased their stock from brokers.

Brokers had a “Rolodex” full of coal tipples, mines, and coal companies from whom these brokers bought production.

So while the Lynch Turn on the 1971 era LN EK Division is, in strings of orange 100 ton hoppers, moving coal from their loader to United States Steel, who is buying the 2 car load output of the 1952 era Athol Coal Company Tipple #3?

Admittedly the diagram might be a useful tool for the crew who have chosen to operate Pettigrew Yard, instructing them where to send loads as well as returning MTYS, does it need to show dedicated, off-layout, customers?

I have chosen, in the past, to simulate the coal business from the brokering point of view. It is very likely I should be doing both. One train should be full of cars all billed to Bethlehem Steel, one to the coal docks for export, and one train should have a multitude of different waybills representing different customers or brokers.

It’s that last train that presents a problem. These car loads are indeed going to many different customers, just not from Pettigrew in two and three car blocks. They would be traveling to yards, off-layout, closer to their consignees where they would then be broken into small blocks for local delivery.

I’m just not thinking that dedicating the output of each Tipple to a specific off-layout consignee is what I want to do. It makes the uncertainty I built into my two-sided “Mine tag-final billing waybill a moot point.

On the other hand I’m not sure ANY operators will care where the coal loads are billed.

Do you dedicate the loads to specific off-layout consignee’s?

Do you find that your operators even care?

I understand the cases where one is copying an exact prototype situation, For example on Gary Siegel’s L&N EK division, his model of the Lynch Turn which goes directly to United States Steel.

But in the case of a series of freelanced tipples and mines, should that coal be dedicated to recurring “freelanced” customers?

It would make staging simpler.

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