For Steam Railway Fans

@Jacko1971 nice, don't recognise it?

@Jacko1971 Ooh, that's mucky coal. Becoming hard to obtain decent-quality stuff, now that Ffos-y-Fran has closed.

@ArishMell

@ArishMell Major issue for all heritage sites that use stationary engines or locomotives. One traction engine owner I spoke to said he was using coal from Colombia! Not as good as Welsh steam coal.

@FreddieUK Friends who operated a miniature-railway at a traction-engine rally a couple of years ago say the coal given there seemed from two different courses, and certainly very different "type".

It is a daft situation that they closed the one open-cast pit still working in Wales, and refused a new deep mine in Cumbria; so now need import coal not only for the heritage trade and domestic fuel but also of course for coking for the Scunthorpe blast-furnaces. Over which I felt most politicians and journalists out of their depth by the way they kept waffling about arc-furnaces. A few understood, but not many.

The heritage people have been experimenting with these fancy "green" fuels that contain all sorts of odd materials like nut shells or something; but apparently with very mixed results.