Wall Street Journal, Nasdaq, The Australian – Workers in a rural warehouse here are restoring four machines: a locomotive for coal miner Consol Energy Inc., and three 1947 San Francisco streetcars. Read
By this time next year, the coal-mining equipment could be gone, and the workers at Brookville Equipment Corp. left repairing just streetcars.
So it goes in coal country, which has been bruised by competition from natural gas, regulation of coal’s heavy carbon footprint, and economic forces like the strong dollar. As big coal miners struggle, their equipment suppliers—thousands of firms sprinkled throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky—are scrambling to find new customers anywhere they can, from gun shops to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.
