2. Inverted Box Girder Bridge.
This is known as the High Line Bridge on the D&SNGRR. I don’t know if it’s the correct terminology, but I refer to bridges like this as inverted box girder, because the box girder support system is below the tracks. A standard box girder bridge is one where the train travels through (not over) the girder support system. After collecting numerous photos of this bridge, I found one of the wooden bridge that it replaced (below), so I’ll probably do the wooden version.
9. Sand House.
This is the sand house, as it still exists, at Chama, New Mexico. I will be modeling this facility in at least one of my two yards. Steam locomotives carried sand in a dome on top of the boiler. When the driving wheels needed extra traction, the sand was fed through small tubes down to just in front of the driving wheels, and released on to the rail heads. Diesel-electric locomotives still use this method of getting traction on slippery rails.
10. Ash Pit.
Coal burning steam locomotives produce ash in their fireboxes, and this needs to be emptied. If the fire in an engine was left burning overnight (banked), so that the engine would be ready to go in the morning, one of the first tasks of the hostler was to pull the locomotive over the ash pit and rake out the grate at the bottom of the firebox. Cleaning this was necessary to provide proper ventilation for the fire. Wood burning locomotives did not generate as much ash as coal burners, and what did occur either went out the stack or down on to the tracks. Is it any wonder that wood burners often caused fires along the right of way! Ash pits were located near the engine storage facilities in yards. Some of the coal would form “clinkers” as it burned, and these would be used to ballast the yard tracks (see right area of photo).
10B. Coaling Tower
This is the sand house and coaling tower complex at Chama. These two facilities were often located near each other in the engine servicing area of railroad yards. The coal tower at Chama has been “modeled to death”, and exists on just about everyone’s layouts, no matter where they are set. Having said that, it is a beautiful structure, and the D&RGW built others that were similar at a number of its towns. Before it was torn down in the late 1960s, there was an identical one to this at Durango.
I will probably use the method shown above for delivering coal to the tower. A drop-bottom gondola full of coal is set out over a grid on a slightly raised section of track. The coal goes down through the track, and is collected by the coaling tower elevator bucket. The bucket carries it up to the top of the tower, where it is released into storage bins to be gravity fed to the locomotive tenders.
12. Small Engine House (Silverton).
I will probably scratch-build some version of this type of engine house for Silverton, because space up there is very limited.
13. Single Stall Engine House (Lumber Camp).
I think something like this would look good in the lumber camp. The open side provides a nice look into the interior of the shop.
15. Small Temporary Bridge at Lumber Camp.
Since track in the cutting areas of lumber camps only needed to remain in place as long as it took to remove the trees, it was constructed as simply and quickly as possible, as this little temporary bridge demonstrates. I’ll use something like this in one area of my lumber camp.
16. Lumber Camp Workers’ Quarters.
Lumber workers lived and ate right in the camps. Often the structures were built small enough to be moved on rail cars to new locations.
19. Animas River.
The Animas River Gorge is the most beautiful part of the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge RR. My central “roll-under” will attempt to recreate some of this gorgeous right of way.
20. Snowy Area.
In the mountains, particularly at higher elevations, snowfalls can occur into the late spring or come early in the fall. I have so many trees left over from the Christmas Train layout that have snow on them. The snow can’t be removed, and it seems a shame to throw them out, so the only solution is to incorporate a little bit of a snowy area on my new layout, so there will be one little corner, high above the lumber camp, where trains will travel through a winter wonderland like the one pictured in this early fall snow scene here.
22. Yard Tracks.
Railroad yards were areas where freight and passenger cars were assembled into trains, and locomotives could be stored and serviced. They were almost always fairly flat, and quite often had darker track ballast because the clinkers from the ash pits were a handy substance. Sometimes, especially on narrow gauge lines, there were areas where grass and weeds grew up between the rails. My layout will have two yards, one at Durango, and one at Silverton. Yards are an integral part of model railroads built to operate with a purpose. This is a photo of the actual yard at Durango.
27. Tunnel Portals.
Tunneling was the technique of last resort for railroads because of the time and labor involved. Railroads preferred to run their trains as near to level ground as possible. In mountainous terrain, that often meant using small cuts and fills, or trestles and bridges if there was water involved. Culverts under the tracks and through the fill also served to keep the tracks and ballast dry. Most tunnels had to have tunnel portals and tunnel liners to keep falling rocks off the tracks, but in areas where the rock surrounding the tunnel bore was hard and stable enough, no tunnel portal at all was necessary, like the one pictured above. This is on the Cumbres & Toltec Scenic Railroad, and is appropriately called “Rock Tunnel”.
This is a typical wooden tunnel portal, designed to keep the mouth of the tunnel open, and falling rocks from the surrounding mountain at bay.
29. Water Tower.
The D&RGW had distinctive water towers with slightly tapered sides. The rooves were sometimes round, and sometimes octagonal.
29B. Lumber Camp Water Tank.
30. Low Water Crossing.
Just outside of Silverton, the D&SNGRR crosses a shallow section of the Animas River. This crossing is effected on a series of very low trestle bents, and short pylons consisting of rock enclosed in wooden boxes made from railroad tie sized timbers. In the area to the right in Plan Section 3, which I may wind up calling Cascade Canyon, there are three rail crossings of the Animas River, each lower than the one behind it. This would be the nature of the lowest crossing.
I would appreciate credit to me for the image showing my coaling tower.
Thank you.
LikeLike
http://www.phoenixrestoration.org/smoke-damage/ Thanks for that awesome posting. It saved MUCH time 🙂
LikeLike