Coal Age Magazine - For nearly 100 years, Coal Age has been the magazine that readers can trust for guidance and insight on this important industry.
Issue link: https://coal.epubxp.com/i/82345
1940-1949 steam-turbine electric-drive engines, these white-elephants would spend most of their time in the shop and would be scrapped by the middle of the 1950s. Only the Union Pacific Railroad would have any real success with turbines, and only after they were pow- ered by diesel fuel. Natural Gas Offers Stiff Competition, but Other Markets Beckon In the September 1946 issue, the editors put together a long piece on the threat of natural gas competition to the industry. "Translating the natural gas to be available from the Big Inch line into tons of anthracite on a Btu basis, we find this 275 million cubic feet of anthracite coal, or 3,055,000 tons per year on a basis of 300 working days. In 1945, your company pro- duced 3,379,275 ton of anthracite in domestic sizes. This stern warning, pro- voked by plans of the natural gas industry to pump peacetime gas instead of wartime oil from Texas fields to industries and homes in the Philadelphia-New York area through the Big and Little Inch pipelines, was voiced in a pamphlet recently issued to its miners by the Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co." As soon as the war was over, natural gas began expanding its reach nationwide. "Realistic appraisal of the competitive situ- ation gives coal men little cause for com- placency—not that they have any on this score. Indeed, there is good reason for busy days and some sleepless nights these next few years if the coal industry expects to beat off this new threat without occurring too many losses." Since 1920, the natural gas industry had expanded nearly at the same rate as the anthracite industry had retreat- ed, taking over much of its customer base in the process. This trend continued throughout the decade. During 1946, miners dug more than 532 million tons of coal, which was used, among other things, to make two-thirds of the coun- try's electricity. "At the same time, work was progressing on an experimental plant at Oak Ridge, Tenn., to produce electricity by split- ting atoms," reported Eugene Snyder of the McGraw-Hill Economics Staff in the March 1947 issue. "Will this new source of power replace, compete with or merely supple- ment the use of coal?" Nuclear science, of course, was in its infancy in the late 1940s, but throughout the rest of the decade and for years to come, tremendous amounts of research and development dollars would be spent perfecting this science and developing commercial grade atomic power. August 2012 100th Anniversary Special Issue www.coalage.com 93