European Railroad Discussion > English steam locomotive coal.

In a discussion on the steam board concerning "Why does NW 611 'black smoke' so easy?", the answers pointed towards possibility of the coal. I pointed out that in most photos on TO of British steam engines, there is not a lot of black smoke out of the smoke stack is not black. The question what coal does the British use for their trains? And is Welsh coal still being mined?

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When I was at the Ffestiniog Railway in April they were using a mix of Russian and Welsh coal. Yes, Welsh coal is still mined, I've posted some pictures on Trainorders recently of rail served coal operations here in Wales, it's all open cast of course, there's no deep mining anywhere in the UK anymore.

Coal is still coming out of a small number of welsh mines - but power generation in the UK using coal has virtually fallen to zero over the course of the past year.

Interesting point, because "best welsh steam coal" which was generally a hard high-carbon anthracitic substance became much harder to obtain after the war, and the challenge for much postwar steam operation in the UK was to get decent performance from poorer quality coal. The Great Western Railway in particular had designed most of its locos to use very high grade coal, while the other lines had developed designs that used their own local coal sources. Nick is quite right to point out that small amounts of coal are still mined in Wales (wholly opencast), but I have not a clue as to how much they match the old deep mined stuff.

I also know nothing about the qualities of Appalachian coal, but I do know that since the 1830s UK steam locos have been legally required to "consume their own smoke" ( whatever that means) and that until the brick arch (to facilitate secondary combustion) was developed in the mid-19th century British engines all burned coke.

In my recollection, regular steam operation in the UK was often accompanied by lots of smoke, but I guess that concerns might have been a bit less in the US, especially outside urban areas. A major difference would be the use mechanical stokers. which have never been used over here (apart from the odd experiment). I think that they need different size and grade of fuel, but I might be wrong.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/29/17 02:33 by spflow.

spflow Wrote:
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> Nick is quite right to point
> out that small amounts of coal are still mined in
> Wales (wholly opencast), but I have not a clue as
> to how much they match the old deep mined stuff.

I buy locally mined anthracite for our Rayburn from Abergavenny Fuels. Very little clinker, just ash.

Interestingly the Ffestiniog buys two grades of coal, one for the FR itself, delivered to Minffordd, and one for the WHR at Dinas. The latter is bigger being more suitable for the NGG16 Garratts.