Understand your frustration but you could trade coal in? One of the key points of the game for me is like any economy, you can focus on over production of certain elements to then trade for those resources you are short of? Like you i've done about 15 MCC chains, am running plat creation in the epic forge and have a coal defeict of 100k a day so i take the view, i will never balance coal. I guess if that is not your playing style or desire then fair enough , fully respect your decision
As for the weekly training, did one, wont ever do another one - utterly pointless