I ran across this article on Robert Murray. Evidently, he is about the last coal man ( bituminous) fighting the administration.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/sns-wp-blm-coa ... story.html
"The Last King of Coal" ?
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Interesting read.
What they have done to coal they are now doing to paper mills and makes you wonder where anyone is going to work in 10 years.
I remember working for the Union Pacific in the heyday of coal coming out of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, the dispatcher telling us "Don't even try to get track time today boys, we are trying to run the record number of trains in a 12 hour shift". They later got that record; 120 trains in 12 hours on 4 mainlines. (This was joint trackage with BNSF)
When touring the Black Thunder Mine (the largest one in North America at that time), I asked the guy giving us the tour of how long the coal would last. The Powder River Coal seam stretches from Wyoming, up in Montana and into Canada. "At the rate we are excavating it, we should run out of coal in 300-400 years."
Now all that coal is being run to Seattle and put on ships destined for China...but we still get their smoke!
What they have done to coal they are now doing to paper mills and makes you wonder where anyone is going to work in 10 years.
I remember working for the Union Pacific in the heyday of coal coming out of the Powder River Basin in Wyoming, the dispatcher telling us "Don't even try to get track time today boys, we are trying to run the record number of trains in a 12 hour shift". They later got that record; 120 trains in 12 hours on 4 mainlines. (This was joint trackage with BNSF)
When touring the Black Thunder Mine (the largest one in North America at that time), I asked the guy giving us the tour of how long the coal would last. The Powder River Coal seam stretches from Wyoming, up in Montana and into Canada. "At the rate we are excavating it, we should run out of coal in 300-400 years."
Now all that coal is being run to Seattle and put on ships destined for China...but we still get their smoke!
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China aint about to stop burning coal. I read where they are opening up what will be the largest open pit coal mine in the world. New coal fired generating plants are coming online almost 1 a month. The Bummer went over there and made one of his anti coal "agreements" with them. They told him they would think about it for about 10 years and then maybe do something about it There is such a thing as burning coal cleanly but I guess china isn't interested in that.