Boreas Pass engine house question

[Kurt Maechner]

When I walked around the remains of the Boreas Pass engine house, I took the following photo:

Does anyone know what this is?  My guess is that it was related to the water tank, but it seems a bit small when I compare it to the size of the indoor water tank at the Alpine Tunnel engine house.  

Any ideas?
Kurt

[Dave Eggleston]

Ash or inspection pit? Would be interesting to see this on a plan of the space.

[Chris Walker]

Can't tell from your photo where it is situated in relation to the remaining walls nor gauge the size of the hole.  Ashpits and inspection pits are located in the line of track, I would think the facilities layout of Boreas shed was the same as Alpine and the wooden version up on Fremont.

[Kurt Maechner]

I think it was in the far left corner (of the engine house) of these photos.  


Both are pointing towards Breckenridge

[Kurt Maechner]

The remaining stone wall from the original photo in my first post can be identified in the back left of the wider photos.

[Chris Walker]

Well. if it is rectangular in the corner, then it will be the remains of a cistern under the the Water Tank.  By example the Colorado Central had stone cisterns beside their Water Tanks at Elk Creek and the Lower Idaho Springs W.T.

[ComoDepot]

The water tank was 5x18 and held just short of 10,000 gallons.

Fed by a spring presumably to the south and presumably only in summer. I assume the waterline is still buried.

There is a modern pipe buried under the pass, you can see the manhole cover, but that brings water from the west side into the Tarryall.

My recollection is that it was located in the south west corner.