Whats a good way to make piles of coal or wood chip etc.. for hoppers and gondolas? I didn't know if I should just start with a cube or maybe a cone with alot of points and then move the points to various places to make it look like a load of coal. Thanks in advance for any help.

Do it with a texture

Here's one I use a lot..scale as required.
Create a single plane..scale to fit the hopper....divide it a couple of times....move some of the points around in the y axis to get rid of the flatness...apply the texture.

Bazza

Coal.jpg (66 Kb, 75 downloads)

I made two "mounds" using about 4 to 5 faces each (from a single rectangle face and subdividing it). I pulled the center points UP to make the mounds. End result was low poly and looked good with a decent texture added to it.