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Bob....They get better and better...I say with the "denizens of the MM office"..Keep us up on the latest updates
Pete
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From: POOTUS2010 <bearmtnbob@yahoo.com> To: CBQ <CBQ@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Fri, Apr 13, 2012 8:24 am Subject: [CBQ] Re: Burlington Sand Tower Question --- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "POOTUS2010" <bearmtnbob@...> wrote: > > > > --- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "POOTUS2010" <bearmtnbob@> wrote: > > > > > > > > --- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "POOTUS2010" <bearmtnbob@> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "POOTUS2010" <bearmtnbob@> wrote: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > --- In CBQ@yahoogroups.com, "Nelson Moyer" <ku0a@> wrote: > > > > > One January night during a "Stock Show Weather" snowstorm, the laborer I was working with, mentioned that heard what had sounded like animals or "ghosteses" cries. I really didn't want to get out of the warm cab (Happened to be one of the last of the ATS&F CG-30's, I think it was still in red w/the famous ATSF paint job) but finally decided it was prudent to go and check. As soon as I climbed down from the cab, I began to hear sounds that were more like the bleating of a sheep and it seemed to be emanating from somewhere along the walkway beside the pit. Following the sound to its source, it only took seconds to see what the trouble was. On the riiver side of the pit was a below ground concrete oil skimmer made composed of several concrete caissons each lower than the other which allowed waste oil, water and God knows what else to drain off by steps, much like the lock system of a canal to a concrete collecting basin where the collected effluvia and oil were sucked into a tank truck sent out on an irregular basis to collect the stuff. Either sitting or standing in the deepest section was one very indignant as well as drunk,one very old gentleman traveler of the rails. Covered from head to foot in new and used diesel lube oil, old air compressor oil, governor oil, urine, water and who knows what else. We had left the access cover off the previous night so that the level of the refuse oil in the sump sump could be checked and reported. The first thing he said was "Get me the He&& out of here, this stuff tastes like sh&3! At that point in the conversation, I felt it best to not tell him why. I then reached over and opened the trainline of the unit (last in the consist)next to me which brought my partner running when the engines went into "big hole". the immediate problem was to get him out of the grease trap since he was in no danger of freezing, the oil/water mixture being quite warm. After several aborted attempts to get him out with broom handles and an old switcher fan drive V-belt as a tow rope (the laborer wanted to pull him out with the consist!) I told him to remain calm while I called the yardmaster on the radio. At this the bum let out a string of invectives, curses and insults directed at me, most of which I had never before heard in the army, church, or working as a tutor in several inner city schools. After the yardmaster summoned police and EMTs, I turned to go back out of the cab when the laborer opened the cab door and said "He's gone" which I took to mean that the poor fellow, much like a Titanic victim had succumbed to the waters of the oil skimmer and was now slowly drifting to his final rest on the bottom. "Let's get him out now!!!" I said, but the laborer kept insisting: "He's gone." I turned on the headlights, to see a bit better, and there about 20' in front of the engine was a pile of wet s teaming clothes next to the tracks, and about another 25' beyond that was a bright pink totally naked and scrawny derriere disappearing into the gloom and blowing snow of Rice Yard. He had somehow gotten out his own, disrobed and then decided to head for parts unknown. When the long-suffering Denver Police and EMTs arrived, I related the entire story to them and they searched the area but were unable to locate the swimmer. One patrolman signaled me with his flashlight, and when i got over to him pointed it at the east rail of the pit, there was a small amount of blood smeared along the rail as well as several irregular strips of skin and flesh adhering to the same rail. Seems like the "victim" had sat on the freezing rail (it was below 20 degrees outside and had previously been in the teens) to take off his shoes, and when he stood up, had left a very personal souvenier of himself (for posteriority?)! My partner said this would not be the end of this because the bu m had told him the that he was a very close friend of then Governor Dick La$$.By this time, the master mechanic Ira Lear wondered if I ought to have a special chair and desk in his office becuase i had to spend so much time ther writing up these "unseemly incidents" at Rice Yard. Whenever I left his or General Roundhouse foreman Larry Nelson's office, many of the denizens along the office corridor stop me and wanted to hear the latest "update" from Rice Yard. Bob Munshower > > > > > 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 we ll 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 whi ch 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, Sou th 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. > > > On occasion I tried to hurry the sand box filling process by notching the motors up to RUN 3 and that was all well and good until the much higher volume of air and sand mix being pushed through the old worn out system caused several "geyser" to sprout where none had existed before. Several of these would have been the envy of a Yellowstone National Park ranger, but I figured they just saved me and my family a long drive North to see the real ones. I had to remain close to the tower in case of a malfunction and since I worked the 11:00 - 7:00 a.m. shift, nodding and dozing was not all that difficult to accomplish. Several times I came to with a sense of forboding, and sure enough, when my pupils had dilated enough for me to see, there was often a half ton or more of sand piling up on the short nose of a GP-30 or SD-40 and then cascading over the walkways down into the diesel pit, which, when the sump pump wasn't running had about 2-4 inches of mixed diesel fuel, new and used lube oil and water. i would try to convince the Santa Fe engineers to leave the sand in place as the weight would help with adhesion as the engines climbed the stiff grade out of Denver to the Palmer Lake Divide. Despite my advice, they always chose to go without the added sand, and I must in all fairness add that they always helped to shovel it off. I also suggested on occasion that they close all the windows, put on respirators and take the consist out on the mainline and run to the depot and back several times to blow it off but they never were able to see the inherent wisdom of my ideas. Next - the indignant Bum that fell into the grease skimmer, at 20 degrees above zero as well as the story of the nefarious turntable builder's plate theives . > __._,_.___
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