--- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "POOTUS2010" <bearmtnbob@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- 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
>
More on sandtowers from the inside out. Once the bucket elavator had taken the
sand up to the top of the sand house along with assorted dead/live rats,
pigeons, squirrels and parairie dogs or what ever had fallen into the basement
under the sand car, a diverter plate and large mesh screen caught or broke up
most but not all of the debris or large lumps of sand off of the elevator. The
aforementioned sandhouse and sandtower are visible in many photos of Rice Yard
and the roundhouse work area on the property. At ground level the sandhouse
contained another large tapered bin which allowed me to control the flow of
sand during the process by which compressed air which was supplied by an idling
locomotive via the trainline air hose was used to blow the sand up into the
sand tower, where by gravity, it would flow down one of four, a couple of years
later three, then finally just two hoses. the problem for me was that in
1976-79 there was still quite a mixture of 1st, 2nd and 3rd gen. motive power
coming into and going out of Rice Yard. The Powder River coal boom had already
begun but I never saw that power at the diesel pit, the coal trains had all the
new and best motors (never heard anyone on the C&S/BN refer to them as
diesels)on the system. The BN mainline to South Denver followed the eastern
boundry of Rice Yard and one could see a uninterrupted procession of loaded
coal trains and helpers headed South for the D&RGW/AT&SF joint line to Pueblo
and the great unknown. Back to the sandboxes. With only two hoses, it was
difficult to reach many of the sandboxes on the oddball units so I kept several
funnels and different lengths of drainspout piping to use as extensions. Lots
of old "Q" artifacts such as oil and kerosene cans, all topmarked were just
lying around, the diesel pit area. Later on I will relate the circumstances of
how I found some of the original Union Pacific surveys and track profiles from
the Denver, South Park & Pacific, Colorado Central, Denver, Utah & Pacific rr's
as well as the original UP mainline to Promentory Point.Some of the very last F
units came through Rice Yard as well as many exotic creatures headed for the
FRA test facility at Pueblo. At that time the CF&I mills were still cranking
out steel day and night and I think a few of those beasts were headed for their
final reward there.
------------------------------------
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