Goerge,
In terms of the fuel burned it really depends on the firebox configuration as well as a few other factors. IMO you have your coal types reversed. Soft coal does not require as much heat to initiate combustion, and you can use this in smaller fireboxes than the anthricite coal, but it is not as clean burning. Take a look (for example) of the anthricite roads like the Pennsy and such in how their engines had to have large fire boxes in order to have enough grate space for the slower burning coal. Even though Anthricie burns hotter, it takes more heat to get to it's flash point....longer to burn off, and requires a little more anticipation when reading your fire.
Now we get to the question of mix. Some places (I know that portland has done this as well as some other people) have tried a mix of the two types of coal to cut down on the amount of smoke that the locomotives put out. There are a few reasons for this, but we can explain it in 2 seperate discussions. 1st is the coal itself. Bitumionuse (soft) coal has an outer layer that causes quite a lot of smoke when it "burns off" where as this layer on hard coal does not react as much. The idea of combining the coal into something like a 50/50 or 40/60 etc is in principal a good temporary fix to the "smoking" of the locomotive. The only issue you run into is how you get a good mix in every tender fill. there are different ways to do this, but I have yet to see it work well.
I am more of a fan of the "read your fire" method. If you have a fireman who can read the fire, or excersizes the pattern system of fireing, you can also eliviate the "smoke" problem with the added bennifit of fuel concervation and a better steaming engine.
I don't know if I would say that most locomotives were set up for hard coal before 1915, it really depended where the railroad was located and where the nearest fuel source was. The Stourbridge Lion (the first engine in america) on the D&H was set up for it, as the D&H was in this area....the Baltimore and Ohio orriginally was an anthricite road....but a lot of the southern roads were not. All about where they could get the fuel, and at what cost.
If you are interested in the thing I was tralking about with reading a fire, I have some stuff that I can post. Let me know.
Character is doing the right thing when nobody's looking. There are too many people who think that the only thing that's right is to get by, and the only thing that's wrong is to get caught. JC Watts
Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to include tomato in a fruit salid.
