Coal freight

[ole man]

Since MT closed all the mines down in the 80's, where do we get our coal from, and what effect did closing the mines have on the freight in the UK?

 

[sprinterguy]

A lot of flows for the Yorkshire power stations come in from collieries in the Ayrshire region such as Killoch and from Ravenstruther near Carstairs, while a considerable proportion is imported through several ports including Tyne Dock, Immingham and Avonmouth. I think there's still a few collieries hanging on around Yorkshire as well.

 

[ole man]

So i take it is a lot cheaper to buy it in from abroad?. Is it as good quality as the UK coal?.
Who runs the coal mines in scotland?

 

[sprinterguy]

They're run by Scottish Coal.

 

[MidnightFlyer]

There's still a bit in South Wales isn't there? Wasn't there recently a steam tour that failed because the Russian coal it was using was a tad dodgy?

 

[TGVDUDE]

Also Coal supplied to Aberthaw still supplied by Rail from Cwmgrach, Guaen-Cae-Gurwen, Cwmbargoed, Avonmouth, not so sure about Tower Colliery however. Flows from Pontycymmer ended in late 1990s, and Parc Slip - Westbury flows ended as soon as 2009!

 

[ole man]

How cheaper is it to get coal from Russia and afar?.
Ive been around Chesterfield for two days and was surprised at how many pits there was around that area, and that in some places the track is still there

 

[MidnightFlyer]

How cheaper is it to get coal from Russia and afar?.
Ive been around Chesterfield for two days and was surprised at how many pits there was around that area, and that in some places the track is still there

There were hundreds of mines in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and South and southern West Yorkshire, mostly gone now. Mining also happened in Kent, and still occurs in Devon and Cornwall, but for other commodities though.

 

[ole man]

Is there still coal to be mined from any closed pits? Or have they had there time and that is it

 

[73202]

When I was working at Avonmouth a few years ago I asked the staff there where the coal was being imported from. Australia was the answer.

 

[ole man]

How much does that cost, surely that can't make sense?

 

[ainsworth74]

Is there still coal to be mined from any closed pits? Or have they had there time and that is it

It's there in some of them (I'm led to believe that there are still some workable seams in Yorkshire for example) but it wasn't economic to mine it any more (cheaper to import) and it certainly wouldn't be economic to start up a new mine to get at it (massive massive start up costs and almost certainly going to be environmental issues and NIMBYs as well).

Having said that if the price of coal ever goes up substantially it may at some point become economic to mine coal again in this country but that's not going to be for some time.

 

[ole man]

So let me get this right, mine in Australia, ship across the world, load onto freight trains and wagons all across the UK and its still cheaper than mining coal in the UK!!!

 

[ainsworth74]

So let me get this right, mine in Australia, ship across the world, load onto freight trains and wagons all across the UK and its still cheaper than mining coal in the UK!!!

Yes. To put it bluntly it's cheaper to do it that way round than to mine it here.

Coal is too cheap to be economic to mine in this country due to the ease of mining in countries like Australia/China/Russia/Poland. In some cases they can use simple open pit mines where they basically make a massive hole in the ground as the coal is literally just below the surface (so there are no shafts, drainage and other supporting gear that deep pits in this country would need). Even if they do need to use a shaft to mine from it will probably be much shallower than pits in this country as our coal seams are much deeper due to the age of the mines that are working them (all the easy to get at coal is gone). Also in China/Russia/Poland (not sure about Australia) labour costs are far far lower and the unions there are far weaker than they are here (if they even exist) so not only are costs lower but there is less likely to be any disruption in supply due to strikes by workers. Finally in Russia/China there are far laxer safety standards and environmental standards to meet again allowing for cost savings by cutting corners that would see mines in this country shut down or otherwise have sanctions imposed against them.

There's no way around it coal is cheaper to produce overseas and ship in than it is to produce here.

 

[OxtedL]

The transport in the UK is broadly speaking the same regardless.

Abroad in Australia and Poland and so on you can have much bigger mines (Britain doesn't have big enough seams or something like that) which brings with it massive economies of scale. And probably cheaper labour. Shifting something by boat halfway across the world becomes surprisingly cheap if you have enough of it.

So yeah, I can imagine it's still cheaper.

 

[ole man]

Suppose MT had a point then

 

[John55]

In general terms british mined coal is very expensive to get out of the ground due to the geology under the British Isles. Most of our coal is in narrow seams which can only be worked from deep mines. (Expensive includes the health and lives of the workforce.)

Most of the coal imported into britain is from huge open cast sites in Australia, South America and elsewhere where the coal can be extracted by mechanical means in the open air and transported by very efficient heavy haul railways to seaports.

The other thing to remember is until the mid eighties electricity prices in britain were (relatively) much higher than today due to the huge subsidies paid by the consumer via their electricity bills to the NCB. Now these subsidies have gone the generators do not use coal as a fuel for base load power stations but use gas instead. The requirement to reduce sulphur emissions (pre GFDS) in the short term did coal no good either.

The change in freight flows was quite dramatic. Instead of MGR coal trains cycling around the Nottinghamshire - Yorkshire area we now have flows from Avonmouth, Liverpool, Hull, Immingham, Hunterston, Tyne Dock etc to the remaining power stations.

British coal consumption is now about 40 - 50 million tons per year and 15 million is mined in the UK. The interesting question is will there be any demand for coal in 20 years and how will that affect the railways? It is almost certain the Settle and Carlisle route will be much quieter by then for example as the Hunterston to Aire Valley coal trains will surely disappear.

 

[73202]

Yes. All the way from Australia. Load into wagons and transport to Didcot power station. A similar situation was a foundry man who told me of a quote he had done to have some casting made for crane counter weights. They ended up being made in India and shipped to the UK cheaper than he could buy the raw material to make them.

 

[themiller]

When transporting huge amounts of goods by ship, the cost of the transport as a percent of the value of the goods is tiny so the bigger the ship the lower the cost of shipping per unit of goods.

 

[anthony263]

Also Coal supplied to Aberthaw still supplied by Rail from Cwmgrach, Guaen-Cae-Gurwen, Cwmbargoed, Avonmouth, not so sure about Tower Colliery however. Flows from Pontycymmer ended in late 1990s, and Parc Slip - Westbury flows ended as soon as 2009!

You forgot that new mine up in the neath valley and Tower Colliery is supposed to being re-opened as an opencast mine.

There is still a lot of coal at Parc Slip which is just lying there a lot of it after it was dug up.

 

[HSTEd]

There will be more nuclear workings in the future, which might, to a degree, help replace the coal workings (although I understand modern reactors would need one fuel and one spent fuel train every 2 years at tops).

That is if the country embraces sanity.

 

[Holly]

There will be more nuclear workings in the future, which might, to a degree, help replace the coal workings (although I understand modern reactors would need one fuel and one spent fuel train every 2 years at tops). That is if the country embraces sanity.

Or embraces sanity by way of development of tidal lagoons.
In which case rock will have to be quarried and conveyed downhill to ships on a scale much greater than any previous railway system.

 

[ole man]

Tidal lagoons? what are they?

 

[route:oxford]

Or embraces sanity by way of development of tidal lagoons.
In which case rock will have to be quarried and conveyed downhill to ships on a scale much greater than any previous railway system.

Lots of rock will be available if the plans for the new SSE pump-storage facilitiy goes ahead in Scotland.

 

[anthony263]

Or decides to build the Severn Barrage

 

[Wyvern]

That's why the economics of the railway system have changed dramatically in the last few decades.

In the late 19th and early twentieth centuries you didnt need to justify investment on the basis of passenger work.

Our main railways, particularly in the north, were all largely financed by the carriage of coal.

 

[DRobins]

There were hundreds of mines in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and South and southern West Yorkshire, mostly gone now. Mining also happened in Kent, and still occurs in Devon and Cornwall, but for other commodities though.

Let's not forget the once huge coalfields in Durham, Northumberland and Fife. The last mines to close in these regions were the coastal pits taking coal from under the North Sea. There are still substantial reserves under the North Sea, but the further you step out, the more expensive it gets. Along with safety considerations (you are getting further away from an escape point) and geological difficulties it eventually became uneconomic to continue, but the coal is still there.
As for re-opening, not with current technology, the mines flood once you turn the pumps off, trying to pump out the coastal mines would be very difficult and expensive. You can't only pump out the seam you want to work either, as the weight of water in abandoned seams above can be too dangerous to allow work to continue.
Some of the underground railway systems in these mines were immense, and in many cases it wasn't deemed financially viable to return the infrastructure and machinery to surface. The whole lot was left underground, locos and all.

 

[cawky22]

ON the Tyne today is a vessel that came from New Orleans with coal ! Also outside the piers at anchorage is a ship that came from Vystock in Russia ,we get ships from Murmansk and also Ust Luga In Russia , Also we get a lot from Riga which is in Latvia.We have received a few shipments from Norfolk Virginia :-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-PTDJfKfnI&list=UUFyf_43M-VpQ2-TJs220TEw&index=3&feature=plcp
We have never had any coal from Poland this year, but it does some come in ships owned by a company called " Polsteam " which is based in Poland .
The majority and the best quality Biomass we receive from Vancouver. Though some of the smaller shipments 25 -30 000 tonnes comes from Panama City , Florida .
I have heard that Tyne Dock is currently filling 12 trains per day , but they are wanting to get it up to 25 a day . And they are going to build a new biomass faccility ,. why I read this was here in the comments on this video from a train driver :-

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l__cwepPeA0&context=C359f926ADOEgsToPDskJHE8zT-wrJlDz2SsLzQvgv

 

[GarethW]

Lots of rock will be available if the plans for the new SSE pump-storage facilitiy goes ahead in Scotland.

Lets hope its built a little bit better than Glendoe, open for a couple of days then massive rockfall in the main tunnel, still not re-opened and lawsuits ongoing. Thank goodness HM didn't get squashed when she opened it!

 

[Talbot]

A lot of flows for the Yorkshire power stations come in from collieries in the Ayrshire region such as Killoch and from Ravenstruther near Carstairs, while a considerable proportion is imported through several ports including Tyne Dock, Immingham and Avonmouth. I think there's still a few collieries hanging on around Yorkshire as well.

Killoch is a colliery no more, closed its workings in 1985 ( I worked underground there). The coal transported from Killoch comes from the nearby opencasts ( surface mines) where it goes to Killoch to go through the wash procedure.
Last deep mine in Ayrshire was the Barony, it also closed through Maggie's reign, 1989 it shut.