[young_hopper]

My grandfather (born Philadelphia 1932) always told a story about how kids in his town would go to the train tracks in the winter and throw rocks at the engines. This would prompt the conductor to throw back pieces of coal from the engine to shoo them away. They would then pick up the coal and run away to use it to heat their homes. The conductors always knew what was going on, but it was the railway's coal, so they just always played along.

Anyway, always found that interesting.

[joecool1029]

I still find big chunks (like bigger than softball) of anthracite coal around where the Morris Canal used to be in NJ. Always assumed some just fell off as they were transporting it from PA to NY for industrial use. I don't think trains normally used chunks this large, when I was a kid we used the more thumb-sized pieces of coal to heat the house when we weren't using wood.

In coldest part of winter I think we'd go through roughly a 5 gallon pail per day of it. (stove would need charging every 12 hours)

[nimbius]

I apprenticed repairing coal cars and mining equipment and I can confirm the industry is pretty wasteful. we used to get cars that still had nearly a hundred pounds of coal in them. we used to quietly shovel it out in the winter and use it to run little shop stoves we called dumpers for heat.

[bombcar]

That's called gleaning and dates back to biblical times or before.

If you look at in based on percentages, you see whilst the amount may be large on a human scale, the time to 'get' that last bit isn't worthwhile.

[Gibbon1]

The bible literally says you have to let widows and orphans glean your fields.

[adrianN]

Do you perchance have a reference for that?

[marvin]

https://biblehub.com/deuteronomy/24-19.htm

[xyzzyz]

For 100 pounds of coal, the bulk buyers paid less than $5, typically $2-3. That’s hardly worth the hassle for them.

[joecool1029]

Nowadays we have waste oil burners to heat shops around here. We used to give all our used engine oil to a mechanic neighbor with a big shop.

[implements]

Regulated now in the UK - dirty engine oils are ‘hazardous” and need an expensive local council permit.

[ars]

How do you light the stuff? I toured a coal mine once, and brought some home, and even with a blowtorch I could not get it to ignite - it just popped little pieces off with some sparks.

It was very hard and black and shiny.

[joecool1029]

It needs a lot of heat and air to get anthracite going. We'd start a fire with wood, get some wood coals built up and then add the coal. It was important to close the door quickly on coal stove as the coaldust is explosive and we once cracked the glass on our stove. There was an electric draft fan on the coal stove we had, I don't know if this is needed or makes it easier to burn.

[awillen]

Is this why Mac and Charlie throw rocks at trains at Christmas?!

[xref]

Can’t cook a proper milksteak otherwise

[burntoutfire]

In my city in Poland (one of the most destitute ones in the country), until very recently, there used to be regular coal train robberies. On segments of the track where trains were moving really slow (like 20-30 km/h), the thieves would jump on the coal wagon and open it up on the side. All the coal would spill along the side of the tracks for the next dozens of meters, and the thieves would prompty load it up on a cargo truck and go away. With recent huge coal price hikes caused by Russian aggression, I suspect this practice might come back.

[culopatin]

What city? I drive through Poland often as a tourist not knowing if I’m safe or not. Would be good to know lol.

[refurb]

Long ago I worked at a massive plant that had its own power station (electricity and steam), fired by coal.

It had its own rail line to bring in coal. When you drove in you’d drive by a pile of coal about 50 ft high.

We got a tour of the power plant and it had recently been upgraded in terms of efficiency and emissions.

Pretty sure it’s been shutdown now.

[krallja]

In Winston-Salem, NC, the tobacco company had its own coal power plant (with train line running through). It’s a chocolate shop, pizzeria, and brewery, with a very large patio now. The “RJR Tob. Co” smokestack is lit up with RGB LEDs.

[Fargoan]

North Dakota State University still has something like that. It's kind of cute.

Found this article about it

https://www.thedickinsonpress.com/business/coal-is-king-on-n...

[8bitsrule]

Good old "Moo U".