Coal operations: updates

 The movement of coal is the primary theme of my layout. I want every other operation to be performed in front of a backdrop of moving coal trains.

Hopper car loads of “coal” originate at tipples, loaders, and mines around the layout. Mine runs bring these coal loads to Pettigrew Yard, the coal marshaling yard, on my layout. At Pettigrew the coal is classified into trains going to like destinations. These trains are then “dispatched” from Pettigrew and, as a rule, run into the various staging yards representing off-layout destinations. During staging these hoppers have their coal loads removed, waybills swapped, motive power and caboose swapped end for end, and they eventually depart staging, representing MTY coal trains returning to Pettigrew. In addition, MTY hoppers, spotted at the various tipples, loaders, and mines around the layout, get loads placed into their hoppers. Anyway,  once these MTY hopper trains arrive back at Pettigrew yard the MTY hoppers get made up into mine run trains which return to the tipples, loaders and mines, and the process starts over again.

I think it’s a simple process.

Coal loads travel on various pieces of paper, mostly waybills. I have a two sided waybill that is placed in the car card pocket of the coal hoppers sitting at loading points. On one side the bill simulates a mine tag. A mine tag “carries” the coal load from the loading point to Pettigrew Yard.

Once the coal hopper arrives at Pettigrew, the bill is flipped, by the Pettigrew YM (PYM). On the other side of this two sided waybill, is the coal loads final billing. It might be East to coal piers for export, it might be West to the steel mills around the Great Lakes, it might be to the Chatsworth Engine House to end up as locomotive fuel. What ever the bill reads, the PYM classifies these coal loads as-per these waybills and builds trains of hoppers going to a like destination.

These waybills compress out a great deal of prototype processes. Grading and sizing coal for example. Coal used in the manufacture of steel will need to have radically different carbon content than coal used in locomotive fire boxes. Coal used in home heating needs to be of a size that “Joe Homeowner” can easily feed into their basement furnace. 

A coal waybill that reads “55Tons of Met Coal for US Steel in Gary, IN” implies that this coal is of a higher carbon content than a bill that reads “55 Tons of steam coal for the power plant at Central High School, Richmond, VA”.

In short, I do not model different sizes of coal in my coal loads,  nor do I imply different grades of coal on my paperwork. The PYM classifies all these coal loads by destination, and leaves the grading and sizing to the imagination.

One thing I’ve found during the process of designing the coal traffic patterns on AIR2 is that I need a regularly scheduled coal train for Littlerock Yard*. Littlerock engine service requires a lot of coal. There is a large coaling tower there. Additionally the industries around Littlerock  have a fairly large appetite for coal. The Flour mill, Town Gas Plant and Brewery have separate powerhouses that each require coal, and Town Gas plant uses copious quantities of coal producing gas. Add in a few other minor customers, and 20-25 coal loads per session need to end up in Littlerock.

I originally thought Westbound coal trains would all be going to the Great Lakes, IE., into WEST Staging.

This has also added the additional dimension of what to do with returning MTY hoppers, but we’ll skip that for now.

*Littlerock Yard is the name of the large yard at the west end of my layout in East Charleston, WV. I kept this name, carried over from my last layout.