I know this is a stupid question but where does coal come from?

Question

I know this is a stupid question but where does coal come from?

Answer 1

There is only one "stupid question."  That is the one that doesn't get asked....

Answer 2

plant fossils

Answer 3

Coal is the fossilised remains of trees that lived and died millions of years ago and were covered up with sediments that hardened into rock.

Over time and under the immense pressure of the rock the dead trees turned into coal, which is hard, black and mostly consists of carbon.

A stratum of coal is called a seam.

Coal mining dates back to prehistoric times where it was done on a small scale, where the seam was at or near the surface. Either the mine was dug horizontally into the side of a hill, known as a drift mine, or a hole was dig into the ground to reach the seam and then the coal excavated from there, known as a bell mine because the bottom of the hole would gradually get bigger than the top.

It wasn't until the industrial revolution began about 200 years ago that deep coal mines appeared, where a shaft is sunk hundreds of feet into the ground to reach the seam and horizontal tunnels cut outward from that to extract the coal.

Nowadays open-cast mining i.e. digging out from an open pit, is also used.

The main coal mining areas in Britain were Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, South Wales, Gloucestershire i.e. Forest of Dean and Bristol area, Somerset, Kent and Lowland Scotland.

Coal mining was owned by private industry until 1948 when the coal industry along with the health service and road and rail transport, was nationalised.

Since then coal mining has declined and although it is still used e.g. to fuel power stations, some trains and domestic use, much of it is now imported from Eastern Europe, e.g. Poland.

Answer 4

Rango is right (as always) on the basics... Regarding coal and trains in America today, coal comes from three basic regions: The Appalachian mountains, "The Rockie Mountain Province" (Wyoming / Utah, and Montana), and "The Gulf Province" (Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Us_co...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_power_...

I am always curious about this subject because my brother is plant-manager of a California Coal-fired power-plant... and I model this on my model railroad.  Their coal comes mostly from a mine-complex in Utah.

Answer 5

it is in huge deposits in the ground.

sometimes it is very deep and must be tunneled into

other places the deposits are near enough to the surface to mine wiht open pits and earth movers

this is not a stupid question by the way.

Answer 6

Coal deposits are the compacted remains of plant debris from millions of years ago.  Something like a modern peat bog, but compressed over millions of years by the earth.

It is mined in a variety of ways.