whitepasser Charlie, the most names are so familiar with me. Once I was together with Walter Helm and his family at their small cabin at Bennett. Did you ever meet Bernie Kern? regarding the plates, interesting that White Pass tried also plastic tie plates. I have seen a lot along the line. And if I'm right, White Pass had the remove all of them. and regarding the tie plant, I try to post a few images of them. Boerries http://www.whitepassfan.net
Charlie,
the most names are so familiar with me. Once I was together with Walter Helm and his family at their small cabin at Bennett. Did you ever meet Bernie Kern?
regarding the plates, interesting that White Pass tried also plastic tie plates. I have seen a lot along the line. And if I'm right, White Pass had the remove all of them.
and regarding the tie plant, I try to post a few images of them.
Boerries
http://www.whitepassfan.net
Well, Boerries Burkhardt, how pleased I am to meet to meet you!! Follow you on the White Pass website. Last time I was North was in 2011 for the snow train, Rotary 1, 69, and 73. Chased it over two days from the Meadows North to Log Cabin. Got lots of good shots
Wasn't Bernie Kern foreman at Pennington or was it Bennett? I remember the name.
Sure would like to see pictures of the plant. You might have heard of Tiss (Christmas) Evans. He was the tie plant engineer supplying the vat steam. He ran an old-time drytop rivetted cast boiler with Worthington steam auxiliaries. We ran the rest of the operation on contract for 1973-75 years. Dave Harder who you may know of (It was his son Dale who was killed at the MOW runaway wreck between Log Cabin and Bennett a few years ago) supplied the ties from his mill up at 10 mile on the Tagish Rd.
Didn't know Walter particularly well. He was a quiet man in town. His wife Edna was Postlady and I knew her quite well. They were a fine family. Spend more time near Bennett now I'm told.
You must know Alvin Gordon (Dispatcher, Plow Pilot, etc), John McDermott (Conductor and Plow Pilot) and Dave Sorrell (Mechanic/Machinist) at Skagway. McDermott hired out on WP in 73, the year after I arrived in Carcross as School Engineer. I haven't been touch with them since I was last North in 2011. Am hoping to go to Wh'se on another matter this year so will probably go down to Skagway and see them.
You must have known of John (Roadmaster North) and June (Carcross operator) Klein as well as John Wally, Ray Moore, George Dewhurst and the Sutton boys (Carx North and South Sections plus winter snow clearing at White Pass).
Plastic tie plates at -60F?? You've got to be kidding. Whatever were they thinking???? Must have been one of Klein's bright (?) ideas. I never heard that one although the section-men had plenty to gripe about otherwise.
Dear God, a blast from the past.....
Charlie
Chilliwack, BC
puffySounds to me like people did not know how to run a tie plant. It is preferable to use dry wood but green wood can be used as well. You use a hot bath first (with or without a retort to pull a vacuum first). Then when the wood is plenty hot and the water has turned to steam you throw it in the cold bath and the cold condenses the steam and sucks the creosote right in. Penta works the same way. Not CCA which is what we used (which is species specific.
Puffy
We ran the plant (under contract) according to White Pass procedures and specifications. As I said I couldn't remember for sure the order of the vats. We definitely didn't have a retort to 'pull a vacuum' which I'm guessing would have made the Penta/diesel mix penetrate deeper into the wood. I'm also expecting that the quality of the wood used was important. As I said, the wood was local Yukon wood. It's suitability for ties, I did not and do not know. White Pass now imports treated ties from 'outside" as i mentioned on another thread. The Carcross plant is long gone. I'm curious, how long would a hot dip normally have been. I was doing this over 40 years ago so the details are fuzzy.
Sounds to me like people did not know how to run a tie plant. It is preferable to use dry wood but green wood can be used as well. You use a hot bath first (with or without a retort to pull a vacuum first). Then when the wood is plenty hot and the water has turned to steam you throw it in the cold bath and the cold condenses the steam and sucks the creosote right in. Penta works the same way. Not CCA which is what we used (which is species specific.
Lenzfamily (Charlie)
Thanks for your recollections and tidbits of information. George Berry sounds familiar as the Skagway roadmaster's name which I could not recall. Maybe some day I will be able to ride the line again but until then YouTube will have to do. Perhaps I will see your name on another forum discussion.
Trackhammer, Oshawa ON
Trackhammer
I guess White Pass and Log Cabin would have been overseen from Skagway. B&B gangs were based there. I didn't know a lot about Skagway people, being from Carcross. Klein was the Northern Roadmaster, territory probably as far south as Bennett if I had to make an educated guess.
I recall hearing of a George Berry IIRC from Skagway but I thought he was B&B. There were Cyr's at Whitehorse who may have worked for the railway. Running crews north and southbound turned at Bennett so we didn't know many of the Skagway people.
Re the ties....
The ties were hot dipped for a max of 1.5-2 hours IIRC. There were two vats in the tie plant, one cold, followed by one hot, again IIRC. The treatment solution was Penta, mixed with Diesel, White Pass' version of creosote I guess. It was vile stuff when heated and it started to give off vapour. Ties were packed on racks, with spacing I guess, two-three racks per vat.
Ties were pretty much green when delivered to the plant, might have overwintered which wouldn't have dried them out much. We used to cut a couple from time to time just to see how much penetration there was so we could see what the results of using this method, specified by White Pass, would be. Penetration was minimal but was deemed acceptable by the Roadmaster.
We used to hear about the wrecks you describe down the line, 73-75 being pretty bad years particularly. Ore traffic was pretty heavy and it didn't let up in winter which made for interesting moments according to the Carcross sectionmen. Drainage was always a problem they said and I don't think they had more than one steamer, if that, available for culverts. Section crews did a LOT of pick and shovel work under difficult conditions, especially during the winter. They did a lot of patchwork repair to get by.
We didn't envy you guys, but then White Pass was one of the few steady employers in small communities. A job was a job, despite the wages and working conditions and there were still three or four section houses open then, south of Carcross.
Those were the days.
Lenzfamily(Charlie)
I am pretty vague on names from so long ago. I seem to remember that the surname of the foreman on the rail changing crew was Linton but I did not really get to know him. The names you list at the end of your note do not sound familiar to me except for that of John Klein, a name I probably only heard being mentioned a few times. I am sure that the roadmaster for Skagway to Bennett was an American gentleman who lived in Skagway. I can't remember his name but I can picture him well and I remember his speech was a bit tongue-tied. I assume that John Klein was the roadmaster for the trackage north from Bennett and therefore I never ran into him since I worked south of Bennett. I worked a few times with a heavy equipment operator with the surame Cyr who lived in Skagway. If I went to town on a weekend It was always Whitehorse or Skagway so Carcross was a place I only passed through. A college friend of mine named Tony worked at Pennington I believe during the summers of '73 and '74 and maybe '72.
As you mentioned, the ties back then were rather soft and they appeared to me to not be treated at all. They had a natural colour and were certainly not black as they would be if treated with creosote. Perhaps they did have a colourless treatment.
As a member of the White Pass section crew we spent many hours in the month of May, '73 clearing snow from culverts and digging channels for the spring melt to drain safely. The snow was still up to the roof top at the White pass section crew quarters when I arrived in early May but it was melting fast. Once the snow was out of the way we mostly changed ties, lifted low joints, gauged curves and heaved the rails to smooth out the curvature here and there. One time there was a minor bridge fire, that spread to nearby vegetation that we helped extinguish. This was a little south of the tunnel and trestle whose photograph you always see in articles about the White Pass Railway.
When I arrived at White Pass to join the track crew the snowshed at the north end of the lake there was in the process of being pulled down using the bulldozer stationed at White pass to deal with snow and slides during the winter. I remember being told that during the spring melt the railway tried to avoid running trains through the canyon south of White Pass during the afternoon and evening due to the danger of train vibrations loosening the soft snow and causing a slide. The section crew had a recent photograph of a passenger car that had been carried down a short distance into the canyon by a small slide near the summit. They said noone was hurt, fortunately.
We have strayed a bit from the original question about tie plates but I hope everyone enjoyed it and it was nice to hear from you Charlie.
trackhammerI worked on the White Pass railway as a section crew member at White Pass in the summer of 1973 and on a rail changing crew as a spiker at Log Cabin in 1974. All rails had tie plates. The main track in 1973 was 85 lb in the White Pass section. The passing tracks had 65 lb and 72 lb rail and I remember a little 56 lb rail too but I am not sure if it was on the passing tracks or just on the motor car setouts. At Log Cabin the rail we were laying towards Bennett was 100 lb. This heavier weight was to accomodate the increasing zinc ore traffic that was moving to Skagway. I am not positive about the tie plate situation on other parts of the line but I would be surprised if there were any locations with no tie plates. I have never been back to this lovely area, I'm sorry to say. As souvenirs I have a moose antler and a thin section of 56 lb rail.
I'm with you. I lived at Carcross 72-75 (school engineer) and knew a number of the sectionmen and a couple of foremen. Track had tie plates and anchors, In fact I have one of each plus a trackbolt set. I do recall the section crews doing the work you described as some of the sectionmen used to come in from White Pass and Log Cabin to Carcross on the weekends. I used to wonder if part of the problem they faced wasn't the ties White Pass used at the time. They were locally cut softwood (Harder's Mill on the Tagish Road IIRC) and treated in the Carcross tie plant. I worked in that plant, treating that wood for several summers. I have to say it wasn't the best wood for ties I ever saw, neither was the treatment process the best either. They weren't dipped for anywhere near long enough to impregnate the wood thoroughly. I recall several years ago seeing ties that I expect we had processed sitting in discard piles beside the tracks around Fraser Meadows. The wood looked like bleached, dried bark-mulch for want of a better term.
When I talked in 2009 with a WPYR conductor I knew, he told me the rail was 115 lb now and the ties were standard size and came from treatment plants from 'outside' . According to him that was the best the roadbed and track had ever been and it certainly had tie plates and anchors everywhere, according to him.
The worst problems in the years I was there were during break-up and freeze-up when the ROW would suffer heaves and iceflows from frozen culverts and limited ROW drainage in places along Bennett Lake, especially around Pennington and south to Bennett. Other problem was the broken rails during the winter depths -40F combined with the frost-heaves.
White Pass ran trains at all temperatures, which were challenges for section crews keeping things together especially in the really cold weather.
Did you know John Wally and Walter Helm, the Sutton brothers, Ray Moore and others on maintenance along with John Klein, the Roadmaster?
Thanks for the answers, everyone.
What was behind this question is a statement I read recently. I'll try to remember where I read it at to post as a reference.
Edit: Found it quick and it was in Trains like I had hoped. Thanks to their search functionality in their DVD archive, I located the reference in the July 1971 issue on page 37.
George W. HiltonUp to 1969, little of the White Pass's program depended on upgrading the railroad. The right of way was basically what it always had been, with track reasonably, but not outstandingly, maintained. The prospect of the Anvil Mine movements caused the management to strengthen the road's bridges and to build a new 675' tunnel. The company has gone to 85 pound rail but never has got around to tie plates.
If this statement is accurate from that story, apparently they were a very recent addition when you arrived.
I worked on the White Pass railway as a section crew member at White Pass in the summer of 1973 and on a rail changing crew as a spiker at Log Cabin in 1974. All rails had tie plates. The main track in 1973 was 85 lb in the White Pass section. The passing tracks had 65 lb and 72 lb rail and I remember a little 56 lb rail too but I am not sure if it was on the passing tracks or just on the motor car setouts. At Log Cabin the rail we were laying towards Bennett was 100 lb. This heavier weight was to accomodate the increasing zinc ore traffic that was moving to Skagway. I am not positive about the tie plate situation on other parts of the line but I would be surprised if there were any locations with no tie plates. I have never been back to this lovely area, I'm sorry to say. As souvenirs I have a moose antler and a thin section of 56 lb rail.
I rode the line in early September of 2010 and just reviewed my photos. Every photo that I have with a decent view of the track reveals that tie plates are in use.
Bill
As they can. Finding OTM for that smaller rail section stuff is hit or miss.
(90# relay rail on WP&Y looks huge)
Do they now use tie plates on their trackage? They didn't back in the 70's.
Our community is FREE to join. To participate you must either login or register for an account.