The typical coal train is 100 to 110 cars long-a mile of coal! Each hopper car holds 100 tons of coal which lasts only 20 minutes fueling a power plant. Bigger surface mines may load two or three Unit Trains of coal a day. Currently, eighty trains leave Wyoming every day. In 1999 we shipped out 25,882 trains. That's 25,882 miles of coal-more than the circumference of the earth.

One unit train can keep a city of 3,000 households (10,000 people) in electricity for a year. How many trains (or cars) would it take to fuel the generators for your town?

Coal at the mine mouth is about $5 per ton. By the time it gets to Illinois, the cost is $30 per ton. A train load of coal is worth $50,000 when it leaves the mine. When it pulls into the power plant in chicage it is worth $300,000! For the user, up to 80% of the cost of the coal is in the transportation.

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