Service facility photos appear to be rare. I suspect that the business of
servicing locomotives didn't lend itself to amateur photography (access
being the chief constraint), and the railroads apparently didn't consider
service facilities of sufficient glamour to feature them in promotional
materials. The only photos may be in private collections of family members
whose relatives worked in the service facilities. I have a couple of photos
of a great uncle in a roundhouse with some of his coworkers, but that was in
Florida in the late 1920a and early 1930s, and the focus was on the people,
not the facilities.
Sand tower photos when it was still in use are apparently rare. BB#23 has a
few pictures of the sand tower. Page 101 shows the sand tower behind 9120 in
1953. Page 102 shows the sand tower behind the coal bin in 1950. Page 104
shows its placement relative to the coal bin. This photo shows a ladder to a
platform, but the top of the ladder isn't in the picture. Page 121 has the
tower and part of the brick sand drying house, but not enough is shown to
model either structure. The coal bin was in use in 1925, but I haven't found
any pictures of the sand tower before the early 1950s. None of these photos
are indexed in Rupert's document, probably because they are incidental to
the main content of the photos. Maybe this discussion will induce someone
holding additional photos to come forward.
Since I haven't gotten any operational information from this group, I posted
the photos and questions to the RPM group, hoping somebody could help
identify the purpose of the unconnected pipes. It's not clear from available
photos whether or not the sand tower served tracks on both sides, but since
the coal tower apparently did, I would expect the sand tower to do so as
well. That would explain the three way splitter at the bottom of the tank,
but how the vertical extension of that splitter was used remains a mystery,
as does the purpose of the unconnected pipe in the wing-shaped cradle above
the outlet pipe.
Nelson Moyer
-----Original Message-----
From: CBQ@yahoogroups.com [mailto:CBQ@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of
bigbearoak
Sent: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 9:46 AM
To: CBQ@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [CBQ] Re: Burlington Sand Tower Question
Thanks, Nelson. It sounds like a great subject for a Zephyr article (hint,
hint). I've felt frustrated not to have this basic part of a servicing
facility available. In HO scale, at least, there have been kits and built
models for several different Burlington water towers, coaling towers,
depots, and other company buildings, including handcar shed, section house,
even dry closest. But for sand houses, I've never seen anything, not even a
plan (not for the Q anyway; there have been kits for e.g., the D&RGW narrow
gauge, Colorado Midland, and others).
Do you know the age of that tower you photographed? What I really want to
know is about when the 'modern' metal cylinder design replaced the old
saltbox sand houses you see in early 20th-c. photos.
Thanks again, and happy modeling!
Jonathan
--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "Nelson Moyer" <ku0a@...> wrote:
>
> I posted five close-up photos of the sand tower in Burlington. Photos of
> the whole tower are in my Burlington Depot Album. I need to know more
about
> how the tower operated, i.e. which is the fill pipe and which is the
> delivery pipe. As the tower sits now, a hose is connected to the long pipe
> extending from the tower. That pipe comes out of the center of the tank at
> the bottom with a three-way splitter, however only one of the splits is
> connected. Above the connected pipe is a cradle with another pipe that
> isn't connected to anything. What was that pipe for? Two weights are on
> slide rods and markers are on one of the two rods in the earlier photos.
> Those markers don't appear in recent photos, so apparently they were
removed
> when the tower was repainted. What did the markers indicate, sand level?
> What were the pulley cables connected to besides the weights? There
appears
> to be a vent in the top of the tank. How was it constructed and used? I
> assume there was s drying house and a air pressure system to deliver sand
to
> the tower, but I've never seen any pictures of the drying house.
>
>
>
> I measured the tower, and I've drawn a preliminary set of HO scale plans
for
> a model. Now I need to know how to make the detail parts and connect the
> pipes.
>
>
>
> Nelson Moyer
>
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