I am an old baby boomer and rode the N&W as a young boy while it was still steam. Lotsa memories there! I had Lionel in the late 40's and early 50's as did many of my generation. I modeled HO layouts starting at the age of 12 (Varney mostly). After serving in Vietnam I build about 7 different layouts, all HO and bought into brass engines, albeit gently. In my last big modeling blast in the 1980's, DCC was just catching on, but I ignored it.
I have not model railroaded since about 1988 but have had a fatal attraction to HOn3 and bought dribs and drabs of narrow gauge materials, mostly track, supplies and rolling stock for about the last 20 years.
The final push came at a train show I attended on a lark in June 2011. Having been totally uncoupled from the hobby since 88, I was stunned and amazed at a small portable layout there running the fabulous blackstone D&RGW C-19s and K-27s.
I'm IN and HOOKED again!!.
I have always modeled my own ficticious railroad, the D&DW (Disputanta and Danville Western). While not a purist by any means, I like to not drift too far into fantasy land; like running Bigboys with DD-40s. The D&DW was based in real world places in VA as a ficticious variant of the old N&W tidewater run. (google Disputanta, VA for an intersting background) Great opportunities existed near Ivor, VA where there is a real nudist camp. A small camp was on my railroad where the engineer and fireman would be seen both, at the water stop, standing on the tender looking over the camp's fence.
Being a nuclear physicist and amateur scientist, I was always fascinated with the Uranium boom of the lat e40's and 50's on the Colorado plateau and know all the lore of the period as an amateur historian of sorts.
I hope to model a D&RGW fantasy branch line of the 40's50's period of the D&RGW that carried U ore from mine to mill. Incidentally the D&RGW or it early narrow gauge variants did carry U ore, but only back in the 1910-1920 time frame when the uranium was thrown away as waste once its radium content was stripped. (1 gram of radium per 20 tons of U ore). Most of the U.S. first atom bomb's Uranium came from these instantly accessable old uranium discard tailings piles in the 40's.
Thus, my odd screen posting moniker or name
Just my introduction
Richard
If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed
IIRC the Rio Grande Southern carried some type of radioactive ore during WW2. One of L.Beebe's books shows a picture of such a train and notes that at the time it seemed odd to people that the US was subsidizing the RGS for no apparent reason; after the A-bombs were dropped, people learned what had been in the trains.
The RGS might have been transporting shipments of old tailings from Uravan, Co. This was the Vanadium Corp of America's Vanadium mine. It seems that Uranium and Vanadium on the Colorado Plateau are intimately inter-mixed in many types of rock. Thus, vandium ore can also contain a lot of uranium and vice versa. Uravan was so named for URAium-VANadium. In the early 1900's, Radium was extracted from Uranium ore mined in and around this site.
During WWI Vanadium for harding steel was vital. Both uranium and vanadium were mined and milled at Uravan. Unfortunately, massive deposits of U ore was found in Katanga Africa, which was in the Belgain Congo in the late teens. This killed the entire radium industry worldwide! The radium market was, now, effectively owned by Belgium. Uravan became a vanadium only mill, overnight! Uranium, itself, was never valuable for its own sake and, therefore, vast piles of discarded U tailings accumulated at Uravan left over from its early uranium processing and its ongoing vanadium milling.
The Manhattan project needed tons of Uranium metal overnight, and with zero uranium specific mining capacity in the U.S., the tailings pile at Uravan became a precious and instant resource. This work had to remain secret and, thus, the tailings were shipped to government milling facilities quickly and quietly. The RGS may have been this shipper.
The "Uranium Boom" of the late 40's and 50's made the Colorado Plateau rival the 1849 gold rush! Colorado, Utah and the northern part of New Mexico hummed as thousands of fortune seekers flooded the area and hundreds of millions of tons of ore was discovered mined and milled as the U.S. and Russia set off atomic bombs like firecrackers. The U.S, alone, would ultimately set off over 1000 nuclear bombs! The Colorado plateau provided the "flour" to bake these deadly cakes.
Now back to my effort with the D&RGW........ I have just checked and from the end of WWII, 1945, until the 60s and 70s, there were Uranium mills and Ore concentrator facilities in both Gunnison and Durango! This means the D&RGW might certainly have been involved in some form of shipments during the Cold War. The government has spent hundreds of millions in cleanup of these radioactive sites! The details are amazing! Gunnison alone had over a million cubic yards of tailings removed from its 61 acre facility. Durango had even more and Rifle, CO also was highly contaminanted. All were old Uranium mill towns during the cold war. Typically, at a mill, ore comes in and "yellow cake", Uranium oxide, goes out. Ore arrives in gondolas and yellow cake, in 55 gallon barrels, leaves in box cars.
I now have the excuse I need to allow the D&RGW to fantasy carry U ore without too much of a tug on the imagination. Get out those Mudhens and old C-19s and haul atomic rock!
For you modern era Diesel fans, Moab, Utah is currently involved in a multi-billion dollar rad-waste cleanup at the old Atlas U mill there. Millions of tons of U tailings have been, are, and will be hauled out in special BNSF "Trains of Woe" to a special burial site. The job of hauling will continue until 2022!! Note, only specially designed rail cars are used in these "horror" trains. Kit bashers, Google it and check it out online.
Very interesting information. I am modeling the D&RGW and I know there were lots of mines in the entire area serviced by the narrow gauge line. This gives me food for thought as well, thank you.
Glad to open up a new avenue of thought for Colorado plateau railroading.
The idea of mixing the end of the steam era on rickity 3 foot gauge rail with the "Atomic Age" is a nice dichotomy. The end of the Uranium Boom came like a thunder bolt in the late 50's and early 60's along with the demise of the old D&RGW narrow gauge as a revenue hauling railroad. The Atomic Energy Commision revoked its flat $25,000 bonus offered for new Uranium strikes in 1957 and by 1962 they refused to automatically buy from any new small time producers. It seems the "dog-hole" miners and U Boom discoveries had vastly outpaced the AEC's need for Uranium. They were knee deep in Yellow cake and could set off bombs fast enough to use it up!
By the way, the AEC in the late 40's set itself up as the sole legal buyer of any and all U ore or U product in the United States!!!....They also set the price they would pay very high inorder to encourage Uranium prospecting and mining)
Only the big mine conglomerates could "play" after 1962 and their production rate was just about right. They could even keep pace with the growing civilian nuclear power needs in the 60's and 70's.
Of interest..............There is currently only one Uranium mill in the enitre United States and it is on active standby. (not producing). Needless to say, with no mill to deliver to and pay for ore, the U mining industry in the U.S. is now moribund. It seems we import most of our U needs for power plants from Canada, France and Russia.
My envisioned special fanatsy short branch line of the D&RGW will service mostly several small "dog hole" mines (1-3 total operators and muckers; a mom and pop type operation so common during the boom) There will be only one major "company" mine at the branch terminus, delivering ore to both Durango and Gunnison. U mining made enough to pay well even for mom and pop operations.
More details to work out..... Gotta' look at some maps, the geography and the D&RGW's actual full trackage routing of the period 1945-1955.
Grand Junction was also another concentration point for U shipments. Then there is the Rocky Flats facility, located on a spur just off the Moffat Line near Denver, where plutonium was fabricated into weapon cores.
I also use various parts of the nuclear fuel cycle to provide traffic on my layout. I model Durango as a dual-gauge terminal. It's on a fictitious DRGW standard gauge line that connected Moab to Grants, NM, with tackage rights into Albuquerque. I have a nuclear processing facility called Uracam (Uranium Corporation of America) at a place called Dove Creek, where the ore processed at the smelter in Durango is further refined. Rather suspiciously, there is a company called CCCP (Colorado ConCrete Products) that is located right next door, which reportedly has foreign owners.
So my facilities are mostly fictional, but it works for me. I'm a Cold War historian, so find these amusing conceits help justify the traffic on my layout, as well as supplying context for my version of the Rio Grande.
The dual gauge runs to a coal mine at Hesperus just west of Durango, the NG Silverton branch connects at Silverton with the Mears Roads there up to the mines, some of which are rumored to have sizable gov't contracts
Good to meet you, sounds like we think a lot alike in terms of interesting justifications for our layouts. If you haven't already found them, the Yahoo HOn3 and Blackstone_Model_Trains email lists will be of interest to you.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
As an aside, my wife just retired from the Defense Nuclear Safety Facillity in Wash DC. Irony at its best!
It's good to hear that I am not alone in linking my hobby to my professional life or other areas of cross-linked interests, especially as relates to the nuclear side of railroading. A very odd combo. That makes two of us that we know of.
My layout, by the way, is a shelf style that runs around the sloped roof area in my finished attic. It is mostly limited to 30 inch maximum width and forms a continuous closed loop oval arrangement about 24-30 inches wide over a 50 foot long run all around. I have made a long bench that is movable such that when you stand on it during an operating session, your head is about 14" above the bulk of the trackage. I find this just about ideal. Little can be done on the back 6" of the 30" width as the roof slope almost touches the rear of the shelf. Sadly, any grades or climbing has to end up near the outside edges of the shelf area where my max available over head vertical is 19". As I envision it, the max climb on my layout will be about 7-10 inches off the shelf base to leave enough room for a rather pitiable sky back drop.
I have just now cleared it of my old HO layout of the late 1980's, installed new homasote and have layed down about 8 feet of code 70 flex track. I have just received and tested two Blackstone K-27s and one of their C-19s. All have DCC with Tsunami sound. They are fantastic!
narrow gauge nuclear:
Will you have a video of the nuclear test you do on your layout?
It would be a first in model railroading!
Ken G Price My N-Scale Layout
Digitrax Super Empire Builder Radio System. South Valley Texas Railroad. SVTRR
N-Scale out west. 1996-1998 or so! UP, SP, Missouri Pacific, C&NW.
narrow gauge nuclearFor you modern era Diesel fans, Moab, Utah is currently involved in a multi-billion dollar rad-waste cleanup at the old Atlas U mill there. Millions of tons of U tailings have been, are, and will be hauled out in special BNSF "Trains of Woe" to a special burial site. The job of hauling will continue until 2022!! Note, only specially designed rail cars are used in these "horror" trains. Kit bashers, Google it and check it out online.
It's an interesting site to see. It's been there for half a century, and they are just now worried about the tailing poluting the Colorado River. I think the train rolls out once a month. I have yet to see it move in the few times I've been down there, but they've always had Utah Railway units on the head end.
It's pretty neat how they dig it up and load it into specialized containers, that are then cherry picked off the trucks and loaded on the train. If memory serves me right, they are burying the waste only about ~20 miles north of the area.
All but about six nuclear tests conducted on U.S. soil were carried out at the desert Nevada test site. A fer' piece from Colorado and the D&RGW. I realize it was tongue in cheek about the modeling of a test.
The other tests on our national soil were all part of Project Plow Share's GAS BUGGY series and fired in the Kit Carson National Park! Two atom bombs were set off just outside Hattiesburg Mississippi! These were the only atom bomb tests East of the Mississippi River. The giant 5 megaton test of the Spartan missle warhead was set off at the Amchitka Alaska wild life preserve. Seems we liked testing in national parks and preserves.....No nasty permission slips required.....It was all Dept of the Interior controlled property. This last test was so horrific, "Greenpeace" was formed as a result of it.
About my layout again.......... I am limiting myself to the required 22 inch radius curves suggested by Blackstone. This is fine at the oval ends where I will use mostly 30 inch radius turns on the return to the opposite side of the layout, but 22 radius gobbles up shelf space in the 22 foot long straight sections. I'll be limited to only a few zigs and zags over the bulk of my system. Still, I am more fortunate than most MRs with even this much space.
Your fantasy branch line could even go to Los Alamos for the Manhattan project. And this is not too far from reality either.
The D&RGW narrow gauge branch from Antonito to Santa Fe NM (often called the Chili Line) went near Los Alamos. However the line was abandoned shortly before the Manhattan project started. So it didn't play a part in this historical project.
But on your line it could still be around. You could mine, mill, and deliver the uranium all on one line and still be somewhat close to the prototype.
Here are a few links about the Chili line:
Brief History of the Chili Line
Wikipedia entry on the Chili Line
And here is a fantastic book on the Chili Line:
The Chili Line and Santa Fe the City Different
I model the D&RGW narrow gauge in G scale on our outdoor layout. Our time period is the late 1940s to early 1950s. Here is a photo of an empty pipe train on the layout:
Matt from Anaheim, CA and Bayfield, COClick Here for my model train photo website
It's a small world
My dissertation research is on the U.S. nuclear intelligence program and fallout's effects on national security policy. Gotta do more writing and less railroading in the next few months, though.
BTW, plenty of fallout everywhere in the continental U.S. from Nevada tests, plus from elsewhere. They did some of the first sampling around the plant at Fukushima looking for plutonium, because one of the reactors was loaded with a certain fuel rich in it. They found plenty of Pu, but most of it was from the atmospheric testing in the 50s and early 60s.
I like my radiation in safe HO scale form only
Sure makes a good back story for various layouts. Maybe we should start a Nuclear Trains group? There is a bunch of cool prototypes to model, which I hope to do someday. Right now, the trains must roll to keep the reactors humming -- somewhere safe
Matt,
Nice pipe train. But there's no pipe?
mlehman Matt, Nice pipe train. But there's no pipe?
Yep...empty pipe train.
I'm still working on getting some pipes to make a convincing load.
Yeah, pipe is always hard if you don't want a caricature in just about any scale.
I've got a couple of HOn3 Wheel Works pipe gons on the ready track for the work shop. Combined with 3 of those sweet Blackstone flats, I'll soon be in the same fix -- pipe train, but no authentic pipes. Now, I do have some lame pipe stand-ins, but
I'm kind of hoping that Blackstone does pipe gons, along with some decent pipe loads. Heck, they could sell a BUNCH of pipe loads all by themselves. Hmmm, I may put that in as a suggestion. They're pretty good at giving us what we need.
FYI One of my cousins was involved in the nuclear ground tests. He and his Army company were deployed in Nevade to be exposed to the Nuc tests. Years later he testified before Congress about radation exposure during the testing. It was asserted that his generation had a higher rate of cancer amoung their offspring than the general population. His oldes son died in his early 20's from Lukemia.
The outcome of the testimony was that the evidence of cause and effect to radiation exposure, in this case, and cancer was.iinconclusive.
"However, the most unusual freight hauled by the little line was the feedstock of the nuclear age-uranium. For, unknown to its builder, the RGS was the nearest railroad to the world's largest uranium deposit, the Paradox Basin area of the Colorado Plateau! "
"The early radioactive metal hauling was to obtain radium primarily for medical purposes. As deposits in Africa became known the radium bubble burst, and traffic was down for a while until the value of uranium, for nuclear uses became known, then a boom time, again followed by a bust. The RGS finally gave up in 1951 as mining tailed off and insufficient traffic remained."
http://r2parks.net/RGS.html
http://www.riograndesouthern.com/RGSTechPages/_bdwhite/atomic.htm
Stix,
Thanks for the RGS detailed info. Fascinating history there! The RGS was really a miner's railroad. Too bad the RGS died at the very beginning of the height of the U boom on the plateau, (1953).
The biggest winners and locations in the 1953 to 1963 U boom on the plateau were Grants in New Mexico and ,in Utah, the Moab area, Green River and Lisbon valley. Colorado, while not "mined out", by any means, just did not have the U rock tonnage or percent contained U in the ore in the highly accessable areas that Utah and New Mexico had. Trucks and better roads just made remote mine transport by rail, a thing of the past.
Crudely graded dirt and gravel roads over which trucks could navigate were a lot cheaper linked to main roads than roadbeds of ballast, wood ties and rail laid up to the widely scattered mines.