Reply by patcollins

My grandfathers shop has a coal pot belly stove in it. The railroad tracks are at the edge of his property and he use to walk down to the tracks with a bucket and pick up what fell off the coal cars that went by. A 5 gallon bucket of coal must have lasted an entire week and man did it heat, the biggest downside was how hard it is to start. He used kerosene on small piece of dried firewood as the starter.