Kevin,
As mentioned in a previous post, the coal from the King coal mine west of Durango, used on the D&SNG and the C&TS, is very good locomotive coal. It burns hot and fast, with relatively high BTU content and not too much ash, and it doesn't form klinkers. When sized right--from about golf ball to baseball size--it is a pleasure to work with, and in a properly drafting locomotive, makes it easy to keep steam up, even with a tonnage load on.
Over the years, due to labor or other problems at King Coal, or railroad bean counters looking for a better deal, other coal sources have been tried on both railroads, usually with unfavorable results. On the C&TS, sometime around 1979, King coal became temporarily unavailable, so we bought some coal from somewhere in northeastern New Mexico or southeastern Colorado. It looked great-all neatly graded at about golf ball size. Unfortunately, it didn't burn very well. I remember running a double-header eastbound from Chama. At Coxo, we were down to about 170 psi on the helper and barely holding our own, when the road engine whistled for a stop. He was down to about 125 and losing ground. The fire bed was up to the door, front to back--I'd never seen a fire that deep before. We spent about 20 minutes stirring the fires and getting steam back up before making the final ascent to Cumbres, both locomotives again losing steam pressure by time we crested the summit. On a subsequent westbound, with the late Chris Pease firing, we arrived at Osier having had some difficulties with the fire all the way from Antonito. During the lunch break, we attempted to shake the fire down a little and noticed that when rocking the grates, the entire fire bed was moving up and down, indicating a massive clinker. With some difficulty, we broke it up and hooked one of the bigger clinkers out the fire door and kicked it out onto the ground, where it lay for at least a year, known as the Chris Pease Memmorial Klinker.
On the D&S in about 1984, we were temporarily using some non-King coal. One day I was assigned as fireman, and I decided I was going to try firing almost continuously using small amounts, well distributed rather than "batch" firing, as is the typical method. I kept the fire quite thin and even, which resulted in less smoke, but I was on my feet the whole trip feeding the fire and watching the left curves. When we got to Silverton, the conductor came up to the cab and said he thought he noticed a cleaner stack on the way up. I opened the fire door and said "Look in there, Shawn (Curtis)--that's a textbook fire!" And it was. All nice and even, slightly deeper at the back wall, safety valve simmering, all ready for a 2-hour idle period during lunch. Normally, on reaching Silverton, with King coal, the firebed is deep enough at the back that it will keep the boiler hot all through lunch with little or no tending until just before getting under way, when all that is required is a little stirring, a little blower, and a few scoops of fresh coal. With that in mind, I took it easy during lunch, and about 20 minutes before departure time, noting good steam pressure, I opened the fire door to bring the fire back to life. To my great surprise, I saw a total of about three tiny glowing embers about the size of your fist. The blower had little or no effect on them. I was afraid I might smother them entirely by shoveling new coal in on top. I actually looked out the cab at the corrals next to the track we were sitting on to see if there was any loose wood I might be able to throw in and restore the fire. By carefully hand-selecting some choice lumps of coal and gingerly placing them on the glowing embers, all the while thankful for the fire-building skills I had learned years before in Boy Scouts, I was able to ever so slowly bring the fire back to life just before getting under way. The lesson was that while that coal burned marginally OK, it definitely had different characteristics than the King coal that we were accustomed to using.
There was another instance of an embarassing low steam pressure stall out and delay which I wasn't involved in, I believe at or near Needleton, probably the following year, again due to using non-King coal.
The sub-standard coals will work in the locomotives, but boy do they make the fireman's job miserable--shaking the fires on the fly, trying to break up and remove klinkers, fighting to keep steam pressure and water level up...let's hope the reserves are plentiful at the King Coal mine.
