Hi All...
Anyone out there remember weed burners? Don't know if there is a more technical name for the beast.
I was still pretty young the last time I saw one operating and it was an awesome sight rolling down the track. You could see the critter coming for miles!
Has anyone ever modelled one either personally or commercially?
Just think it would be a great addition to a layout. With led technology you could simulate a decent fllame effect.
Anyhow the caffeine is wearing off and it's a bit after 0400. I should be going to bed.
Interested to hear anyone's thoughts on a old but fascinating piece of railway equipment!
Amanda Ward
These are likely of the same forever-lost era of leaf burners in the East, a part of my childhood. Lots of trees on properties were not a problem: you raked them onto burlap and dragged them into windrows at the curbs, or in later years fired up the Air Rake and blew them there. Periodically, just like street sweeping, crews would come along with enormous vacuum hoses, bigger than elephant trunks to a child, and suck the leaves into huge trailers. Periodically a network of nozzles would spray something on the pile -- I assumed it ws diesel -- and torches would light it; great clouds of white smoke would boil skyward and every memory of fall would be tinged with the smell of burning leaves.
What killed it was the Clean Air Act, even before oil-price shocks and other sensibilities. Likely the same factors made weedburners unworkable eventually ... probably helped along by better weedkilling spray approaches with less risk of runaway brush fire than the old torches. (Now that the lawyers' cabal has latched onto Roundup causing 'money damages' health problems for humans, could we see a modern reintroduction on renewable-fuel burning?)
Amanda,
Yes they are pretty cool. Jack Burgess built a model of a weed burner in O scale - here is the link:
http://www.yosemitevalleyrr.com/modeling/current-projects
He had it on a small diorama with some track and a small trestle - really nice model
Guy
see stuff at: the Willoughby Line Site
trainnut1250...Jack Burgess built a model of a weed burner in O scale...
Not surprisingly, a great looking model, too. The b&w photo of the real track workers put me in mind of a scene on John Allen's Gorre & Daphetid - it may have been in a Varney catalogue.
I took a less-detailed approach, and chose to scratchbuild a couple of weed sprayer cars...
While the spray arms are positionable, no actual spraying, and definitely no flames.
The second sprayer was given to a friend, but was stolen some years ago.
Wayne
https://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/topic/weed-burning-train 2001 Alaska Railroad
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