JANUARY 2001

    As you may have noticed by now, I am rather partial to coal dealers (see November & December 2000 Railroad Model Craftsman, for instance). To kick off this new year, I would like to zero in on a couple of typical branchline retail coal facilities, and examine their operations in the interest of providing modellers with some background information. It never hurts our efforts in miniature to know something of the way the real world worked five decades ago.

    The place is Meaford, Ontario, on the CNR Allandale Subdivision (this is a good time to advise everyone who does not already have a copy of Steam at Allandale to purchase it now; as of today we only have about two dozen copies remaining, and they are going first-come, first-served). For a picture of the track and building arrangement, consult page 93 of the aforementioned book.

    On February 1, 1949, the former Chappel coal business was purchased by William Ball. On the Georgian Bay waterfront, the new Ball Coal Company joined the Ciglen Coal Company as the two dealers serving the community. In addition to coal, Ball assumed the drayage contract formerly held by Chappel (this amounted to local cartage of less-than-carload freight) and a cement supply business.

    Throughout the 1950s, both Ball and Ciglen received anthracite (hard coal), coke and briquettes by rail. The last two commodities only amounted to approximately half a dozen carloads per dealer each year. Ball had the local franchise for "Blue Coal", and ordered his supply from the Blue Coal agency in Toronto. He also acted as agent for the Reading Coal Company, handling their famous "red coal". Ciglen sold Lehigh Valley anthracite. As competitors, they each sold their own brands. Several times per year, the two companies were visited by travelling representatives of various coal companies.

    The Meaford coal dealers were fortunate in being located on a waterfront, and both took advantage of cheaper bulk water transport. Throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, the S. S. Wyandotte, a self-unloader, made roughly one call per year to each company, and piled soft coal (i.e. stoker coal and "steam" coal for factories) on the dock. The Big Head River continually filled the harbour with silt, necessitating dredging every few years. Coming into the harbour was tricky for the boat, as an S-turn was required. Leaving was no easier, as the self-unloader had to turn around in tight confines. It is interesting to note that upon assuming the coal business, William Ball could not take a full cargo of soft coal, but to get started pooled a shipment (arranged through the Empire Hannah coal company, Toronto) with Davis Smith Malone of Owen Sound.

    Hard coal deliveries by rail came twelve months of the year. Wartime shortages of coal caused customers to change their habits; in the 1950s households often bought their annual supply of coal in April, May and June. If more was required, another half ton was taken toward the end of the season.

    In company with railways processing l.c.l. freight, coal dealers such as Ball tried to eliminate extra storage and handling of coal. Whenever possible, carloads of hard coal were loaded directly into delivery trucks with a conveyor. It was more economical for the dealer to pay two or three days' demurrage charges than load the coal into the shed (and later into a truck). Home deliveries were usually in bulk, therefore, except for mid- or late-season partial lots (ranging from 500 lbs. to half a ton) which were bagged. Whenever possible, carloads were scheduled to arrive over a period of time, but unavoidably two or three hopper cars sometimes arrived together, with the extra unloading time resulting in demurrage charges.

    If coal had to be stored in the Ball sheds, the end (largest) bin could be loaded directly from the hopper car with one of the yard's two portable conveyors (the other was parked near the waterfront for loading soft coal into trucks). For storage in other bins, the conveyor loaded a dump truck, and men hand-shovelled the coal into the shed. A couple of yard hands kept moving the coal around in all the bins from time to time. Over at the Ciglen facility, bins below track level allowed gravity unloading. A chute placed under the car fed the coal into the appropriate bin.

    In 1949, Imperial Oil was the only oil dealer in Meaford. However, both coal dealers started selling furnace oil, stove oil and gasoline for their customers who were converting from solid fuel in the 1950s. Ball assumed a British-American franchise, with the fuel trucked in to a depot outside of town. Ciglen's supply of liquid fuel also came in by truck only.

    In the matter of cement, their were tremendous shortages in the immediate postwar years. The Canada Cement Company and the St. Mary's Cement Company were the only two suppliers, and quantities were rationed to dealers. Shortages were alleviated when St. Lawrence Cement came on the scene. Customers ordered their cement in advance, and from the late 1940s through the early 1950s the shipments were gobbled up so quickly that no storage was necessary. Cement arrived in boxcars, packed in 87.5 lb bags, one thousand to the carload.

    For his Coal-Cartage-Cement business, Ball had two dump trucks, one flat bed (for smaller loads up to a ton) and one half-ton pickup truck. The latter vehicle was used for the cartage contract, serving the local stores and factories as needed. Over the winter of 1949-50, horses and sleighs, hold overs from the war years, were still used by Ball for coal deliveries (see Steam at Allandale, page 95).

    The coal business was on its last legs by the 1960s, with the final carloads arriving early in the decade. Around 1965, Ciglen bought out Ball, and the latter proprietor pursued a new career teaching high school. Not many years afterward, Ciglen himself threw in the scoop, and the conveyors began gathering rust on the waterfront.

Ian Wilson
January 8, 2001

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