Interesting memories! Whether you knew the term or not you were a "Shabbos goy" -- a gentile who does the work that is forbidden for Jews to perform on the Sabbath -- there is an interesting article on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shabbos_goy According to that article you should have been paid in advance so that technically it was a gift not payment for work. On another website I found this interesting discussion of the prohibition on work:
For example, one must beware of elevators with automatic sensors that could be accidentally set off. Also, some Sabbath elevators disable the regenerative braking, ensuring that a passenger’s weight on the elevator doesn’t produce any useful work.
Somewhat more on topic, Jordan Products makes a plastic kit for a coal truck with the Hi-Lift sissors mechanism - it is an old Mack truck maybe circa 1923 - found a photo on this website
http://valleymodeltrains.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=21_114
but I have been thinking of using parts with a somewhat newer truck front from the 1930s to represent the coal trucks that were still running in the late 1950s early 1960s. I think the Hi-Lift sissors trucks were expensive enough that the owners did what they could to keep 'em running, because I remember the coal and ice company in my town had really old trucks even though the owner was reputed to be quite well to do. Or maybe that was just town gossip ....
Dave Nelson
I know this is a bit off topic but
when i was 8 years old i got my first paying job. I lived just outside Philadelphia (PA) in a neighborhood with a high concentration of orthadox jews. On saturdays i would go around the neighborhood and clean out their coal furnaces and stoves and relight the fires. I got a nickel from each for doing this. In winter I would do the "old folks" first, and do the rest on the way back. The old folks would give me a dime for the special services. The ashes I would mix in with the garden compost, and the cinders i would spread in the low spots in their driveways.
The local coal and ice dealer was a company named Murphy and Smith. Mr. Murphy was a red haired irishman with a short beard, who must have weighed at least 300 pounds. Mr. Smith was a black man, tall and as skinny as a flagpole. They had an beat up old dump truck the back of which would rise up like on scissors. Mr. Murphy would put a chute in through a cellar window and Mr Smith would climb up into the back of the truck to shovel coal into the chute. There were boards across the back of the truck making pockets so to speak, and each pocket would have 500 pounds of coal in it. Mr. Smith kept a clipboard and would write down how much was being delivered and to whom. Sometimes a bag of coal would have to be taken upstairs for the old folks stoves. Mr Smith would fill up a huge bag (remember I was only 8 or so, everything was huge to me then) an the back of the truck, He would push the bag onto Mr. Murphy's shoulders, then jump down and open the doors for Mr. Murphy. I thought Mr. Murphy was the strongest man in the world.
The world has changed a lot since then, me i'm still the same
One neat thing John Allen did (IIRC you can see it in the video / DVD out on the GD Line) was his ash pit had a red lightbulb hidden under a thin layer of ash (which he got from an ashtray I believe). An engine would stop over the ash pit, and after a while he'd turn the red light on to represent the red hot fire and ash being dumped.
Mobileman44 ..... the description of your experiences are priceless! Thank you for sharing them with us. This whole thread has given me more appreciation for this part of my freight yard.
The pit I'm modeling is in the Walthers Cornerstone series which has a hopper underneath the pit (between the rails), which can be pulled up to the top of a tower, and the hopper is dumped into a chute which drops the ashes into a gondola on a track next to the tower for disposal. It surely could be modeled as a vacant ash pit/tower which has been left standing in the diesal era.
Hal
Hi!
Yikes, unlike some of the previous posters, I have seen and even shoveled coal ashes back in the '50s when I was a kid. Trust me, they are nasty dirty! I certainly saw ashes from steam locos, and had very personal experiences keeping the coal burning furnace cleaned out at my parents store. As a side, I thought I was one lucky kid when they converted to fuel oil - but then got assigned the task of carrying up 5 gallon containers of oil from the basement to the oil stove in the store and our apartment behind.
As someone pointed out in an earlier posting, there is a distinct difference between ashes and cinders or "clinkers". Ashes are the result of fully burned coal, and cinders are not fully burned pieces of coal and ash - akin to charcoal or coke. And then there is my personal favorite - the "clinkers". These were small to softball size pieces of (to the best of my knowledge) impurities in the coal that would not burn. They reminded me of what I suspect a meteorite would look like and were extremely hard. They would get caught in the firebox grates and needed to be broken up so they would fall through and be shoveled out with the ashes, etc.
Ashes are typically shades of grey - from almost white to almost black. Cinders are typically dark grey to black. Of course the ash would stick on whatever it touched, so grey was the primary color. But clinkers were a bit different, ranging from brown to black with shades of dark red or blue in them, probably from the minerals present.
My advice is to randomly color your ashes in all the above colors and shades - and you will be fine.
Oh, I have to say this question brought back some memories.......
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
ENJOY !
Living in southeast Texas, formerly modeling the "postwar" Santa Fe and Illinois Central
The ashpit i use has a sheet steel bottom and is lined with ties. The ties don't catch fire because i fill the pit full of water before i drop the fire into the pit. I run a very small locomotive (12 Tons Davenport 0-4-0T, built 1910) and an average day i have to dump the ashpan once in addition to dumping the fire at the end of the day. In the morning i shovel the ashes out into buckets. I usually fill 3 five gallon pails.
This Kalmbach / MR book has some good information on it. It's not exactly like an inspection pit, it's more like a square or rectangular open area with a trestle running over it, only open in between the rails to allow the ash to fall thru to the pit. The pit can be lined with brick or concrete, although I'm sure dirt wasn't unusual.
Here's a pic of one on Earl Smallshaw's great layout:
Like cats, not all locomotives learned to use the ash pit. I know in Vernon Smith's "One Man's Locomotives" he notes that on the iron mining railroads he worked on in Minnesota, steam engines usually just dumped their fires right on the tracks in the yard. The ties were so buried by ash, dirt and ore dust they were in no danger of catching fire.
How do you model an ash pit? I'm not as worried about full weathering, as I model the diesel transition, but I wanted to model a steam engine facility that was modified/converted for diesel use and hasn't had some of the equipment torn down yet, like the ash pit for instance and the coaling tower. They will still be there, and look well used, they just won't be used. Word an inspection pit work if I shortened it?
You can't beat getting the color from those who have actually seen or handled ashes! But the discussion on cinders was also good.... I need to sprinkle a few of those around in my weathering areas of the ash pit. Thanks everyone.
I think the confusion here is that "cinders" and "ashes" are two different things. Cinders (according to my dictionary) are "any partly burned combustible substance not completely reduced to ashes". So cinders are the unburned small bits of coal that you would find mixed in with the ash, which is the remains of the coal that did completely burn. I assume when using cinders for ballast or sub-ballast / roadbed, the railroads would have screened the ash pit remains to separate the cinders from the ash, and just used the cinders.
"CINDERS AND ASHES" - Thomas the Tank Engine.
This website http://whitemansgandhi.wordpress.com/ describes riding India's famous "toy train" steam train, and watching when they dumped the ashes and men started poking through the ashes looking for unburned coal for their home purposes. The color photo is pretty similar to what I saw when the Soo Line 1003 dumped its ashes in December 2007 during the Plymouth Wisconsin Santa Train
Beach Bill and others,
Cinders are indeed quite dark, maybe not black, but at least a very dark brown with a variety of colors mixed in. We used to have a garage floor made from cinders and there were many walkways, paths and driveways made from them. They came from factory furnaces. I presume the difference in color is the type of coal burned. (Don't fall on them, if they aren't well ground up from use they are sharp and can chop you up in a hurry.)
Have fun,
I vist Steamtown National Historic Park several times a year. {It is close by}
They do a display of dumping the locomotive ashes at the "ash pit". The locomotive coal ashes are light gray, gray, whitish, tan with some black "clinker".
The "ash pit" is not even a pit. It is a concrete lined trackage area where they dump the ashes.
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
I burn semi bituminous coal, the ashes are indeed white to tan with traces of red and pink.
On a trip to Cass, West Virginia, I took along a heavy-gauge zip-lock bag and then scooped some ashes from the actual shay ash pile into the bag for my modeling use. The actual ashes are light grey and white... actually much lighter in color than I would have expected. They are in pretty stark contrast to the Woodland Scenics "cinders" ballast. I just really wanted to use a bit of the real thing, and when I tell visitors that those ashes on the layout really came out of a locomotive of just that type they look at me KNOWING that I'm certifyable! Plan a little spring/summer trip to a steam operation and pack that zip-lock.
Bill
Hello I was not around ether but I would say med gray,light gray bit of black . I think it would look like ash from a fireplace/pit. I have one on my layout but it's not weathered yet. Hope this helps Frank
I'm finishing up the under track HO ash pit and disposal tower, and being a pup when steamers left ----- I wonder what color paints or chalks to use in weathering the scoops, pits, shovels, etc. There must have been a lot of ash dust on the tower girders and on the ground around. And then the ashes themselves. Your help here is much appreciated!