History of anthracite coal mining in Pennsylvania competition with the Schuylkill Navigation Company, until the Reading Railroad eventually leased out the Schuylkill Navigation Company in 1870. The Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad would become the major carrier of anthracite from the northern fields to NYC (Dublin, Licht, 15-17). While the extensive railroad systems made transporting more efficient, they also lowered the price of coal in distant markets such as Philadelphia and NYC relative to the prices in areas surrounding the mines. In 1840 the wholesale price of anthracite in Philadelphia relative to the mine price was 3.6, and by 1864 the ratio was 1.3. A similar drop
Anthracite power-generation. The rarer higher grades of anthracite are purer – i.e., they have a higher carbon content – and are used in steel-making and other segments of the metallurgical industries. Technical characteristics of the various grades of anthracite are as follows: Anthracite is divided by size mainly into applications that need lumps (typically larger than 10 mm) – various industrial processes where it replaces metallurgical coke, and domestic fuel – and those that need fines (less than 10 mm), such as sintering and pelletising. The common American classification by size is as follows: Lump, steamboat, egg and stove coals, the