Plastic O Scale Coal

Thinking outside of the box here:

Small Plastic Pellets

Something like this, and then maybe you could put them in an old food processor or something to chip them up/make them a little more rough?

At my local lumber yard, I bought a bag of Black Beauty. it is used for sand blasting purposes.  It is perfect, I will post pictures tommorrow for you.  I took the plastic coal inserts for the coal cars and sprayed them with glue and coated with the black beauty.  I also used it for ciders in my yard. 

If you look at my layout in teh yard you will see the result.  I will send the coal loads tomorrow

https://ogrforum.com/t...49#17901966896412249

http://www.blackbeautyabrasive...iginal-abrasives.php

I want to say for a 50 lb bag I paid about 25 bucks.  it goes a LONG way!

Hi Dennis,

A friend of mine who has a water softener system in his house gave me a large bag of the charcoal he uses.  It's light weight, clean and looks great.  Look into it!

Some guys also use black aquarium gravel.  Might be too heavy for you, though.

Jerry

Might be a little small for O, as it is HO, but here is a video of a coal loader. Coal dumping starts at about 7:15. Nice video and coal loading model anyway, worth seeing.  Says they are using Woodland Scenics Coarse black ballast.  

Just another idea, the Black Beauty is probably better for size and less expensive?

Edit: Just saw rattler21's post, that coal looks very good in his pictures.

Or you could follow Lionel's lead and use old sprue from former kits; and then break it up in thestumper's old food processor.