New Contest Proposal--Smallville

[ICRR1964]

Stein and I are almost done guys, should have something this this week!

[dehusman]

Ooooh - an ellipsis!

Now THAT'S exercising creativity.

Nope :

Rule 14-h : o o o - Whistle signals.  When standing, back up. 8-)

Dave H.

[marknewton]

Ooooh - an ellipsis!

Now THAT'S exercising creativity.

[JimRCGMO]

...

[marknewton]

Stein, I'm relaxed. I'll stay peaceful, too. I doubt JimRCGMO will be back. He took his shot, then sprinted back to Elliot's Cafe or whatever they call it.

mark.

[steinjr]

1) Thank you, Chip, ICRR, and Stein for your useful information. The debating/point-making does nothing to illuminate.

Really? So stating the facts and explaining the reasons why you reached a particular conclusion isn't "illuminating"?

 Peace, guys. Please. Debating _is_ often useful, and can illuminate.  As can peaceful dialog.

 ICRR and I have been quietly and peacefully working together by email to put together a presentation of Thawville, IL if anyone should want to model the place for the 2x8 contest. It is a very interesting little town.

2) Some of us prefer to exercise creativity, rather than be rivet-counters.

Ah, so "rivet-counters" aren't creative?

 All forms of model railroading/railroad modelling takes creativity. Relax, guys.

 

 Stein

 

 

[marknewton]

1) Thank you, Chip, ICRR, and Stein for your useful information. The debating/point-making does nothing to illuminate.

Really? So stating the facts and explaining the reasons why you reached a particular conclusion isn't "illuminating"?

2) Some of us prefer to exercise creativity, rather than be rivet-counters.

Ah, so "rivet-counters" aren't creative?

[marknewton]

US shortline engines often had siphons to suck water (and anything else slow) out of creeks if necessary.

Yeah, I've seen them on a few preserved Shays. The little Climax at Puffing Billy has one, too, which I've seen used. For locos like these, they're a great idea.

One of my former bosses was a brakeman on the Gurdon-El Dorado local (Arkansas).  They had decided to skip coaling becuase they were in a hurry and they thought they had enough for the trip.  They ended up having to stop on the way back where the section gang had been changing out ties and load chunks of old ties onto the engine for fuel to nurse it back to the terminal.

Dave H.

LOL!
Been there, done that, got the splinters in my hands to show for it!

All the best,

Mark.

[HarryHotspur]

Thanks Chip.

[C&O Fan]

Where do we view the entries? Or do we just read the arguments?

That's a good one Harry !

[SpaceMouse]

Where do we view the entries? Or do we just read the arguments?

The actual contest thread is here:

http://www.trains.com/trccs/forums/1341679/ShowPost.aspx

but the contest isn't over until the 20th and they won't be posted before then.

The past contests are here:

http://www.chipengelmann.com/Trains/4x8Contest.html

http://www.chipengelmann.com/Trains/10x12Contest.html 

 

[HarryHotspur]

Where do we view the entries? Or do we just read the arguments?

[SpaceMouse]

(I work in the mental health field) 

I do believe you've come to the right place.

[ICRR1964]

Point taken Jim, no problem

[JimRCGMO]

1) Thank you, Chip, ICRR, and Stein for your useful information. The debating/point-making does nothing to illuminate.

2) Some of us prefer to exercise creativity, rather than be rivet-counters.

(More than) 'nuff said.

Jim in Cape Girardeau

(I work in the mental health field) 

[dehusman]

US shortline engines often had siphons to suck water (and anything else slow) out of creeks if necessary.

One of my former bosses was a brakeman on the Gurdon-El Dorado local (Arkansas).  They had decided to skip coaling becuase they were in a hurry and they thought they had enough for the trip.  They ended up having to stop on the way back where the section gang had been changing out ties and load chunks of old ties onto the engine for fuel to nurse it back to the terminal.

Dave H.

[marknewton]

NS fitted 611 with a standard fire department hose connection so they could take water from hydrants - frequently with the aid of a local fire department pumper.  Don't know for sure, but logic would suggest that there should be a basket filter at the discharge end of that filler pipe.  Boiler treatment chemicals could have been added from a sack, but that was neither shown nor mentioned.

The video I saw this on is titled Norfolk & Western #611, in case anyone wants to check me.

Nah, I know you're right about this - seen it meself!

All our engines are fitted up in the same way, with through pipes and camlock fittings front and rear. The gins have the same, as well as a diesel pump to transfer water quickly if needed.

It's interesting you mention the pumper trucks, because they're what I've had the most trouble with. Even though we'd always try to arrange for the brigades to only supply town water, there were instances where they took water from creeks or dams. Then you'd either get water that was so muddy it looked like pumpkin soup, or full of weeds and little beasties like yabbies*.

We did experiment with inline filters, but we found if they were fine enough to keep all the muck out, they tended to clog or even burst.

There was one memorable time when we got water from a country bushfire brigade, and there was fire retardant still in their tank. When I put an injector on, the water in the gauge glasses quickly turned milky white, and shortly after that we had no end of trouble with the engine foaming and priming.

It got so bad that we had to stable the train, and run the engine light into Lithgow Loco to blow the thing down, and flush out the tender. 11.00 o'clock on a still Sunday night in a small country town, and we're blowing the engine down three times, with the safeties lifting... The locals really loved us for that!

* Little buggers that are like your crayfish, I suppose. But having dug them all out of the tender strainers, they cooked up quite nicely using the deck hose. Yummy!

Cheers,

Mark.

[HarryHotspur]

Seems like you could fill a tender with a garden hose in about a day and a half or so.

[marknewton]

The other big objection to using water from a hydrant is that it isn't treated in any way, and if my experience is typical, it's got enough rubbish in it to cause problems with foaming and priming. You might use a hydrant in an emergency, but to water regularly like that defies all sense.

Unless you are watering an engine in the 1990's when every single water tower has been torn down for 30 or 40 years.  Then it makes perfect sense.  Fire hydrants become the ONLY water source.  8-)

Dave H.

LOL! You're not wrong, Dave, at least for the US!

I suppose we're lucky here, in that many of the water columns and tank stands have been retained in working order, both for use by heritage steam operators, and to fill the travelling water tank cars we still use in outlying areas. Also, many of the surviving installations are protected by conservation orders, and so have an assured future. There's even one directly across the road from where I live - which is a bugger, because I'm usually the one who has to check that the bloody thing's full!

Just like some US railroads, my railway made extensive use of what you'd probably know as auxilliary tenders or canteens, known here as "water gins". We have a couple still in service, and they get a lot of use when we do long-distance jobs.

But even so, there have been times when we've had to water from hydrants. Not my favourite job, by any means.

Apart from problems with water quality, I've had two trips where because of lengthy delays we've had dramas topping the tender up before departing Sydney Terminal station, which is the main station for the city. The first time the station master had a dummy spit and abused us because he didn't want 3500 gallons charged to his budget. I said "No worries, mate, I'll just drop the fire right here and now on your lovely new track, eh?", and he calmed down a bit.

The second time was after the fire protection section there had been upgraded with a booster pump. When we opened the hydrant, the booster pump spooled up, alarms were set off, and the entire bloody City of Sydney Fire Brigade came roaring out to fight the supposed blaze. Of course, on the engine we were getting the fire prepared before departure, making lots of smoke. You can imagine how dangerously excited the firies got when they saw the towering column of black clag blotting out half the station...

Cheers,

Mark.

[steinjr]

Stein, as you stated, you did not find much info on the web I have done the same searches for years and founf almost nothing on the town. Check your PM and send me a personal email back, I have something for you to see, and back my claim that I have some information.

 This seems unnecessarily melodramatic, but whatever - I have sent you an email through the forum with my email address in the body of my message.

 Couldn't send you an email direct (ie not via forum) as you requested, since you had not included your email address in the _body text_ of your email (the forum sw apparently strips off sender's email address from the header when it forwards emails to other forum users sent from the web page).

 Stein

 

[ICRR1964]

Stein, as you stated, you did not find much info on the web I have done the same searches for years and founf almost nothing on the town. Check your PM and send me a personal email back, I have something for you to see, and back my claim that I have some information.

I'm not making any claim to know 100% of what I have as far as documents, pictures, and word of mouth is true here. If some of the posters feel it did not happen that way, wasn't there, and being impossible, thats fine. I have my info and opinion and they have their opinion's. No problem guys, I'll treat this like a poker game like I stated, fold.

[tomikawaTT]

The other big objection to using water from a hydrant is that it isn't treated in any way, and if my experience is typical, it's got enough rubbish in it to cause problems with foaming and priming. You might use a hydrant in an emergency, but to water regularly like that defies all sense.

Unless you are watering an engine in the 1990's when every single water tower has been torn down for 30 or 40 years.  Then it makes perfect sense.  Fire hydrants become the ONLY water source.  8-)

Dave H.

NS fitted 611 with a standard fire department hose connection so they could take water from hydrants - frequently with the aid of a local fire department pumper.  Don't know for sure, but logic would suggest that there should be a basket filter at the discharge end of that filler pipe.  Boiler treatment chemicals could have been added from a sack, but that was neither shown nor mentioned.

The video I saw this on is titled Norfolk & Western #611, in case anyone wants to check me.

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)

[dehusman]

The other big objection to using water from a hydrant is that it isn't treated in any way, and if my experience is typical, it's got enough rubbish in it to cause problems with foaming and priming. You might use a hydrant in an emergency, but to water regularly like that defies all sense.

Unless you are watering an engine in the 1990's when every single water tower has been torn down for 30 or 40 years.  Then it makes perfect sense.  Fire hydrants become the ONLY water source.  8-)

Dave H.

[marknewton]

Stein, I can't post them now as I'm about to go to work, but I do have some photos of a bare-bones IC coaling facility, that might shed some light on the subject.

Cheers,

Mark.

[marknewton]

...a tender, you would fill from a fire hydrant if anything (actually arranged that too).  That's the only water supply, other than an actual water tower, that would provide enough water to fill a tender in anything approaching a reasonable amount of time.  Especially if it has a train on the main.

Dave H.

The other big objection to using water from a hydrant is that it isn't treated in any way, and if my experience is typical, it's got enough rubbish in it to cause problems with foaming and priming. You might use a hydrant in an emergency, but to water regularly like that defies all sense.

Cheers,

Mark.

[steinjr]

No thats Ok Mark. I'm not going to get involved in this even if I do have pictures and facts, It will just draw more debate. Have fun guys!

 Umm - this is not in any way intended to insult you, but it would probably work better if you instead of just talking about "having pictures and facts" simply explained in clear terms exactly what you have.

 What did you mean by "coal pit" - does your description match the one Dave gave or did your coal pit look different ? Was the coal pit right next to the depot ? Next to some other business ? Somewere else ?

 How do you know it was used for recoaling engines (rather than belonging to a local coal dealer who used it as a stockpile to deliver coal retail to local homes and businesses) ?

• Have you personally seen an engine being recoaled from the coal pit ?
• Do you have a photo actually showing people refueling an engine from the coal pit ?
• Did someone else tell you that they had seen an engine recoaled from the coal pit ?
• You assumed that a coal pile near a depot meant it had been used for coal to engines ?
• Something else ?

 The most robust evidence would be to have a picture showing people shoveling (or otherwise transferring) coal from the pit into a railroad engine tender. Second most robust would be for you to tell us that you had seen this operation with your own eyes. Third person hearsay can be somewhat reliable. Assumptions are less reliable.

 If you explained _how_ you arrived at your conclusion, it could very well be that you are right and Dave and Mark are wrong. 

 I spent the better part of an hour yesterday (and another hour this morning) looking for pictures (and information) in various online sources to see if I could locate more info on the IC line past Thawville, IL, and pictures from Thawville.

 Sadly I didn't find anything that could explain how this coal thing in Thawville worked.

 I learned that Thawville (pop 2000: 258) is an unincorporated village in Ridgeland Township, Iroquois County, near the Illinois/Indiana border, south of Chicago.

 I went through the lists of people living in enumeration district 46 (Thawville Village, Ridgeland Township, Iroquois County) of Illinois in the last census that is searchable on the net - the 1930 census. Thawville was possibly home base for an IC section (MOW) crew - among the people listed in the village in 1930 is one IC RR section foreman (John Johnson) and one IC RR section laborer (Chas H Pierce). There was also one IC RR agent in Thawville village in 1930 - 20 y.o Marshall Eshleman.

 I leafed through the five pages of handwritten census information - spotted several merchants, quite a few school teachers, a couple of mailmen, a baker, a butcher, a mechanic, an electrician etc. No one that (in 1930) was listed as a coal dealer. That's not conclusive either way, though - in a village this size a potensial coal dealership could have been a side business for something else.

 And it is not a given that the businesses (and RR jobs) that existed in 1930 were the same as the ones which existed 20-25 years later - around 1950-55.

 Anyways - as you can see, I am willing to learn, I am willing to do my own homework and I am willing to share what I find out. 

 Are you ? It obviously is up to you if you want to do any actual research on Thawville, with the intent of possibly modelling it, or if you just want to go "I know what I know, but I don't want to discuss it".

 If you want to do analyze what you got, then we probably learn one of two things :

1. Maybe this whole discussion was due to misunderstanding about what the coal pile/pit was and a better thing to model in your average/typical small midwestern agricultural town would be a small coal dealership instead of a engine recoaling spot.
2. Or maybe engines actually were recoaled from a pile on the ground or a pit on the IC around this age, and this would have been a fair thing to model, from a prototype true point of view.  

 Either way it is useful info for RR modellers. If you do the latter ("I don't want to discuss this any more"), then nobody learns anything of much value from this discussion about recoaling engines from the ground in small rural/agricultural midwestern communities in the 1950s.

 Then the only thing we learn is that some people (like Mark or Dave) like to present the evidence and reasoning they used to support their claims, and other people just get upset when asked how they arrived at their claim. And that's not news - we already know that people are different

 But it is your call. I'll stop bugging you about this subject now - if you want to share your sources in a useful way - then that is just great! If not - also okay.

 Smile,
 Stein

 

[dehusman]

If you have pictures and facts share them.  No problem.  I have no doubt there was a coal yard and if you say there was a water tower I believe you. 

But hand shoveling coal into a tender in the 1950's on a class 1 railroad, that's something that would be very, very, very, very rare.  You can fill a diesel engine with water from a 1" or so hose.  Done it.  You can also fill a diesel engine with water from a fire truck.  Modern railroads do that every so often.   But a tender, you would fill from a fire hydrant if anything (actually arranged that too).  That's the only water supply, other than an actual water tower, that would provide enough water to fill a tender in anything approaching a reasonable amount of time.  Especially if it has a train on the main.

Dave H.

[ICRR1964]

No thats Ok Mark. I'm not going to get involved in this even if I do have pictures and facts, It will just draw more debate. Have fun guys!

[marknewton]

It's a pity you see things that way. All Dave and I are trying to do is correct some misinformation, and hopefully educate others about the way steam locos were service and maintained.

You made a good case elsewhere for teaching newcomers, and what has been posted by us in this thread is no different in intent from that. You may be an old hand, but that doesn't man you can't still learn something new. I certainly have!

All the best,

Mark.