Use to be a farmer had a long pasture with a RR going through.
He had a gate setup on both sides, would rig up a board to
drop just above the sides of coal cars. It was lik e a snowplow in reverse.
The plow was stationary, the coal moved across it. Peel it right off,
he shoveled it up and heated the house. ...
The rail line hauling coal out of the mountains ran behind my dad's house during the Depression. My dad told stories of people with ropes and grapples who would drag coal off the cars onto the tracks, and then bag it up after the track was clear.
