Mirant Potomac River Power Plant

The Mirant Potomac River Power Plant is an older power plant located along the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia; however, it provides power to the District of Columbia and Maryland. The plant was built in 1949 and has five sets of boilers and turbines. The boilers are pre-heated using oil and then switch to coal for power generation. is serviced by NS (former Southern). Typical service to the plant is once per week.

The plant has had difficulties in the past (2004-2005) with meeting emissions requirements. This lead to some of the units being shut down, then restarted. This has added to the need for oil, not just coal, at the plant.

There are several interesting features about this power plant. First, because the plant is located in an urban environment, considerable lengths have been taken to minimize the acreage required for the plant, the result is relatively small coal storage area which necessitates more frequent trains and a somewhat challenging switching operation. Key features of this plant are the track arrangement for entering the plant and the rotary dumper building, the curved storage tracks, the all brick boiler and turbine buildings, the large tanks (presumably oil) and the driveway arrangement.

Operations

Please note that this is my assumption about how the plant is worked, not information I've gathered from an actual crew.

Trains approach the plant from the mainline to the west, the train will pull into the siding on the spur and drop half the loaded cars on the siding. Next the train will take the remaining loads and continue past the plant and back into the plant on the eastern entrance track. The loads will be dropped short of the western entrance track. Next the locomotive will enter the plant (without cars) on the western entrance track. Once the empties are collected, they will be pulled out of the plant and onto the spur. Empties will be pushed clear of the eastern end of the siding. Note that the empties will need to be split to leave the various crossing clear. Next the loaded cars on the eastern entrance are pushed into the plant The southern storage track is filled first. Then the locomotive returns to pick up the second section of loads on the siding. These are pushed into the Northern storage track. Finally, the locomotive returns to the empties and pushes them onto the main line.

I would occasionally add tank cars that need to be spotted near the tanks to keep things interesting.

Also, it is not clear to me what the use of the covered hopper cars would be. In the Microsoft Virtual Earth pictures, some are spotted in the storage tracks and some are within the buildings. Feedback would be appreciated on this item.