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J.H. Campbell coal power plant in West Olive MI is offering free hour long tours of their facility on Saturday Sept 21st. I'm taking the 9:30am tour with at least one fellow board member. Feel free to sign up to the tour. There's other time slots available throughout the day as well.
https://www.eventbrite.com/cc/campbell- ... 21-3566139
Plant is due to close next year.

Does it still get rail service? I read somewhere that it is being decommissioned and their plant switcher is gone.

SecondCreek wrote: ↑

Sat Aug 17, 2024 8:32 am

Does it still get rail service? I read somewhere that it is being decommissioned and their plant switcher is gone.

Yes, they still get a coal trains every day. They donated their GE SL144 to the Coopersville & Marne but still have a pair of Republic 2 axle switchers and a Genset mother-slug set on the property.

All tours sold out, 9:30am one sold out the first it appears.

~Z~ wrote: ↑

Fri Aug 23, 2024 9:35 pm

All tours sold out, 9:30am one sold out the first it appears.

Darn. I forgot all about signing up. Oh well.

Dont worry, Wolverine Power might be going into talks with Consumers Energy about the purchase of the JH Campbell unit #3. They have filed a lawsuit against CMS Energy for breach of contract. Wolverine Power had a contract with them until 2040 for 50MW's of firm power. The plant has a price tag of $425 million which is'nt bad considering at peak hours the price of power can go as high as $30.000 an hour. Wolverine Power is also going to purchase 2/3 of the power from the Palisage nuclear power plant once its up and on line.

Decent tour around the power plant today. Saw quite a few familiar faces... Glc392 and dad, ken borg and son, mqt1223, gp30m4206, and I believe gp15? Forget what username he said, but last saw him when I was working at the house of hobbies 25 years ago. Say hi if that's you.
Tour was good, lots of knowledge given by the VP of power production. Got to see the turbine running in plant #3, and tour around the plant grounds.

Did they show you the coal unloading area?

Just the outside of the building they do the rotary dump at, and showed the conveyors for coal, plus the 60 day supply pile they keep.
They burn a car of coal every 10-12 minutes.

I was lurking there too!

It was a great tour! Chatted with the gentleman who wrote the purchase requisition for the NRE Genset.

~Z~ wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 21, 2024 5:29 pm

Decent tour around the power plant today. Saw quite a few familiar faces... Glc392 and dad, ken borg and son, mqt1223, gp30m4206, and I believe gp15? Forget what username he said, but last saw him when I was working at the house of hobbies 25 years ago. Say hi if that's you.
Tour was good, lots of knowledge given by the VP of power production. Got to see the turbine running in plant #3, and tour around the plant grounds.

I should have got a group photo of everyone before I left but I didn't think about it until the tour was over. They claim that they will drawl the stock pile down to a 15 day supply and run coal trains until the last 2 weeks or so. Unit 3 dumper takes about 3 minutes per car, unit 1/2 dumper is 5+ minutes per car as they have to uncouple every car. They also mainly only use the republic locos in the 1/2 dumper for fine spotting where 3 dumper is far more automated and easier so usually use the genset in that dumper.