Another thing to consider about Eastern PA anthracite: Not only was it very difficult to get burning, but by 1959 (when there was an accidental flooding of many of the last remaining mines), it was pretty much mined-out in the region.
First, there are basically three types of coal - lignite, bituminous and anthracite. Lignite could at best be considered almost-coal. It lacks the BTUs of bituminous, but is easier to ignite. On the down side, it requires a wide, shallow firebox, something not ideal for steam locomotive design. Anthracite, on the other hand, found only in Northeastern Pennsylvania, with small locations in Rhode Island and Virginia, provides the most BTUs, but also has its own combustion problems, requiring wide, shallow fireboxes. For many years it served as a home heating fuel, with less ash and smoke than bituminous.
Bituminous coal, the most plentiful, was used for both railroad, steel making and gas production. Its BTU and sulfur content depend not only on the region from which it was mined, but also on what particular coal seam it was mined from. With coal gas no longer needed for home lighting (before electric lighting there was gas lighting), two major uses of coal now remain - coal fired electrical generating plants (which burn "steam coal" since it's used to generate steam), and steel mills, now mostly overseas (which take the coal, convert it to coke, and use the heat generated by the burning coke to melt the iron ore - this is called "met coal", the "met" being short for "metallurgical").
While larger steel producers, such as Bethlehem Steel, had their own "captive" mines (they owned the mine and all the output went to their steel mills), the New York Central Railroad also had its own captive mines, owned and operated by its subsidiary, the Clearfield Bituminous Coal Corporation. These mines were mostly located in Indiana, Cambria and Clearfield counties in Western Pennsylvania and their output traveled over the New York Central's Beech Creek District, Pennsylvania Division, before being shipped to various railroad locales.
Earlier it was stated that coal was heavy and this was why steel mills were located nearer to coal sources. Actually, they were located closer to the coal sources since so much more coal than iron ore was needed in the production of steel. One trainload of iron ore probably needed four or five trainloads of coal just to get steel. It was less expensive to ship the heavier iron ore a longer distance than the other way around.
