There’s an editorial in the Oct 2020 Narrow Gauge World, entitled “The Biggest Threat To Our Future”, where unthinkably there is a looming shortage of locomotive quality coal in the UK. To paraphrase, the very last mine producing washed bituminous lump coal closed in August, and on Sept 8 a proposal for a new mine was turned down (Eco-warriors/politicians wishing to be seen to be “doing something”). The UK will still use 5 million tonnes of coal/year for steel and cement making anyway, but those big operations will just import it from Russia or the USA. If there’s no new domestic sources, steam heritage lines would themselves need to team up and ship coal in from elsewhere at great additional cost, (combined they use just 26k tonnes/year - not even one ship load) and then figure out how to distribute it between them. Or..... convert to oil. Scary thought for the UK preservation sector.
Cheers,
Ralph
PS - that issue also has a main cover photo and excellent feature on RGS 20’s restoration by Bill Jolitz.