At the time, in the areas where I had traveled and worked, the underground mining was still very much active. It has obviously gotten very much more modern from the operations of the Era gone by. Seen a lot of triaxle and tractor trailer traffic on some "spooky" roadways I "shared". Seen many massive long train loads of coal moving and many locations where conveyors where pouring coal out from the underground to the tipples at remarkable rates.
A lot of the coal train and their loads would only travel to a point to where the train would be off loaded to fill the deep drafting river barges for delivery by tug boats up and down the waterway.
Where I reside is just north a short ways from the Ohio River, not all that far from the headwaters at Pittsburgh (Three Rivers). In my work, at times, I would travel up and down the Ohio River Corridor, and you would be amazed with the number of coal powered electric generation facilities that line the river banks. The Ohio River with it's lock and dam system has been kept busy for river barge traffic for coal as well as many other goods for well over a century. In some form goods made there way up and down the Ohio River way before even the Civil War.
Not for this topic, but, there are nearly as much petrochemical products moving this very same way too. But then the pipelines are big movers of these liquid goods too.
