Wabash Westbound 1951

[Notch 8]

Hard to believe the importance of coal.. it came and it went.. Same can be said about the railroads too

[rrnut282]

Contrary to popular belief, coal is not dead. It is down, but there are still many power plants burning it until time for their next re-fit. Coal will always play an important role in the manufacturing of steel, that isn't going away anytime soon.

Now if you are referring to home heating, which most of these yards supported, then yes, all but dead. My grandparents' house out in the county near Churubusco was heated with coal as late as the 1980s. I remember how cool that octopus in the basement looked when it was glowing. It was fun yanking on the chains upstairs to shake the grates.

[Hotbox]

Hard to believe the importance of coal.. it came and it went..

A lot of "unusual" derelict infrastructure that didn't make much sense to me as a kid, turned out to be coal related. I just didn't have the context to understand what I was looking at.

Another example being the old, odd trestle that used to stand parallel to the NYC tracks near where they crossed Sherman Blvd. Circa early 1960s the only thing that was obvious to me, was that it had fallen into disuse. My parents did their best to explain it to me by saying it was "an old train trestle", which to my youthful imagination, I surmised it must have been a predecessor bridge to the one then spanning across Sherman. for the adjacent NYC.

Wasn't until years later when reviewing Sanborn Maps that I finally saw what the original use was.