Last unit at Bruce Mansfield plant to be shuttered in November
Power plant was at center of Trump’s efforts to save coal

A Pennsylvania power plant that was at the center of President Donald Trump’s effort to revive the coal industry will be closing 19 months ahead of schedule.

FirstEnergy Solutions Corp. plans to shutter the Bruce Mansfield power plant’s Unit 3 in November because of “a lack of economic viability,” according to a statement Friday. The company had earlier said it would close the site in June 2021. Units 1 and 2 were deactivated in February.

Bruce Mansfield was the state’s biggest coal-fired power plant but struggled to compete against cheap natural gas flowing out of nearby shale formations. One of its biggest supporters was Robert E. Murray, chief executive officer of Murray Energy Corp. and a major supplier for the complex. He lobbied the Trump administration for policies that would help the facility, and in 2017 the Energy Department proposed a plan to pay coal generators more for stockpiling fuel on-site. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected the idea in 2018.

FirstEnergy Solutions filed for bankruptcy in March 2018, dragged down by its coal and nuclear power plants. It’s a unit of FirstEnergy Corp. The company said the deactivation process at Bruce Mansfield will be complete by May.

FirstEnergy Solutions had said that it would close two nuclear plants in Ohio, and the state last month approved a plan to offer financial assistance that would let the company keep them open.


Short article, no more at link: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-09/firstenergy-solutions-to-shut-coal-fired-plant-19-months-early



Vehicles drive along a road near the Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant in Shippingport, Pennsylvania. Photographer: Justin Merriman/Bloomberg

This weekend will be a wild time near the small town of Wheaton, Minnesota, because a roughly 200-car collection belonging to a farmer who passed away in December is headed for auction. And the fleet, filled with some true gems, will no doubt bring in droves of prospective buyers.

The farmer’s name was James Graham, and he was, according to WDAY ABC News out of Fargo North Dakota, a bachelor whose love for cars began with a 1934 Ford coupe (whose roof Graham and a friend hacked off) that Graham drove to prom many years ago. After that, the vehicles just kept rolling in. From the news site:

Jim Graham, who recently passed away at 88, left behind quite the collection of more than 250 cars he had accumulated over the years. At one point the collection numbered around 500 vehicles, which he housed in sheds across from his farm.

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The company handling the vehicle auction, which is set to commence Friday and continue to Saturday, is called Vanderbrink Auctions, and it has posted a few videos of the incredible herd of mostly Detroit iron. While the video quality is rather poor, the sheer number of astonishing old vehicles shown on the property is mind blowing:

Much more, including videos: https://jalopnik.com/a-minnesota-farmer-spent-his-life-collecting-cars-and-n-1837066153



You can check out the full listing of cars on Vanderbrink’s website, but some of the highlights include this 1958 Edsel Pacer



And my goodness, look at the hood ornament on this 1954 Packard 200 sedan



And this 1954 Pontiac Chieftain also looks deserving of a few turns of some wrenches

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