--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "POOTUS2010" <bearmtnbob@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- 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
> >
> I had to both use and maintain both the sand tower and sandhouse while
> working at Rice Yard in Denver between 1976 and the day the yard was closed.
> Sand was delivered to me in the oldest, most decrepit covered hopper cars on
> the BN. Most were still in "Q" gray and much of the old lettering showed
> through the badly faded paint. The slide hopper jaws on the bottom of the car
> were distorted and mangled beyond belief and nearly impossible to operate
> without 1" thick prybars that were about 5' long, the sad part was that it
> took even more work to close them since that was only way to stop the sanf
> from leaking out. No matter where the waybill said the sand originated from,
> it was always damp and caked to insides of the car. The hundreds of dents on
> the sides of the car testified to the care and caresses applied lovingly with
> 5# sledge hammers across the system. The sand spur ran over a steel hopper
> adjacent to the sand storage house. The hopper led to a basement also
> adjacent to the storage house in which a large bin which fed the 25 foot
> bucket elevator belt lay. At one time the bin had a functioning air powered
> vibrator to help keep the sand flowing (don't remember that ever happening!)
> but in the last years of operation served as an easy way to knock yourself
> nearly unconscious when you walked into it in the usually dark room. I also
> had two natural gas burners which were supposed to be lit and directed at the
> bin to dry the sand before it proceeded to take its last ride up the elevator
> to parts unknown. since the only way to enter this room was through a 3'X3'
> mannhole and down about a 12' ladder, the only way to light off what looked
> like two small jet aircraft afterburners was leave the gas shut off at the
> source, position the burners, go above ground, just crack the gas on a
> little, then light balled up newspapers and hurl them into the basement
> somewhere close to the burners. Most of the time this worked well but as one
> might imagine, the gas kept building up when the newspaper "fuse" failed to
> work as intended. Luckily, yours truly had served in Vietnam as a combat MP
> and was well versed in hitting the dirt and digging in even further awaiting
> the main explosion as well as any secondary eruptions. More to follow in
> another posting.
>
Sand Tower Follies continued.
One evening, the inevitable occurred, we had a major fire, the result of
natural gas igniting when we tried to light the burners with a fusee (just goes
to show you what happens when you deviate from proven methods) One Denver fire
truck arrived after a call from the yardmaster Don >>>>> with some sort of
portable pumping apparatus that would allow them to pump water from the
adjacent Platte River (the old remaining roundhouse water outlets had been shut
off years ago) unfortunately it was heavier than the two firemen had
anticipated which caused them to drop it above the river bank and it then
promptly rolled down the bank into the river where it lay amid considerable
numbers of "Rocky Mountain" spring water potables bottles disposed of in the
river by persons unknown. The fire was finally put out by one railroader and
five firemen wielding scoop shovels. And the fire was put out with? You guessed
it, copious amounts of Lyons, Colorado sand! Unknown to many, part of Rice yard
was above and next to much of the underground works of the Denver Gas Co works.
It was much like a small subterreanean city but was inhabited by many
"homeless" (read as bums) one night there was a gisly murder and the Denver
Police were combing the yard and poking into freight cars looking for the
murderer of which they had a description. Unawares of much of this, I started
filling the sand tower for use filling the sandboxes on C&S train #78 and AT&SF
#424 called around 3:00 a.m. By luck, I shone my flashlight down the manhole
before proceeding and was shcked to see an individual asleep on the sand, his
face and hair quite blood covered. From what little i knew this was the man
they were looking for. I let the 3/8" steel manhole plate fall back into
position and started piling cinder blocks on top of the cover despite the yells
emanating from the basement. For good measure, I turned on the bucket elevator
which raised huge choking clouds of sand dust when in full (rarely) operation.
It never occurred to me that he might choke or walk into the bucket elevator in
the dark and be instantly be dismembered or skinned alive. When the
ever-patient Denver Police arrived, they determined that my "murderer" was the
simply a victim of culinary abuse. He and several others had enjoyed a repast
of severly undercooked pigeons and the blood was not that of a fellow traveler.
The police hustled the poor miscreant off for a short stay courtesy of the City
of Denver. Ocasionally the vertical elevator bucket conveyor belt broke, and,
repairing it was a major operation and required a cable run through
snatchblocks and hooked to a drawbar to pull the very heavy belt back up over
the head pulley, then back down so the two broken ends could be cut square and
reattached to each other with 1" stainless belt clips. to give you an idea of
how much that thing weighed, the belt had staggered rows of cast iron buckets
clipped to the belt. To be continued Bob Munshower
------------------------------------
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