Buffalo revisited

[Norm Acker]

Hi all, does anyone have any information on what date the siding in Buffalo was removed? Thanks!

And just for fun, here's Buffalo's apparently very well-built privy, still standing a couple of years ago...


And the depot sign that the Greene's have stored away in the warehouse with lots of other goodies.

[Jeff Young]

The rest of Buffalo was scrapped in Oct 1938.  

Any reason to believe the siding came out earlier?  (Platte Canon and Then Some has a picture of the scrapper's bunk cars on the spur at Buffalo, but no direct mention is made of the siding.)

Cheers,
Jeff.

[South Park]

  OK, .... why is that privy being allowed to sink back into the ground ?  There isn't a railfan/skilled carpenter in the area with a conscience to get it out of the dirt and get a proper linseed oil soaked shingle roof on it ???

  It's not like it would take a lot of time or money.  

[Robert McFarland]

Recently school students restored the Westall Monument,maybe they could tackle the privy.

[Robert McFarland]

Why not call OLDER THAN DIRT?

[Jim Courtney]

Do you think this is the same privy as in this c1908 photo?  Is it really that old?

http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15330coll22/id/78093/rec/483



Freshly painted and clean, I don't see any windows--Chris would probably feel comfortable using it.

[Norm Acker]

There's a picture attributed to Dick Kindig in "The South Park - Colorado Rail Annual #12" that shows only the main in 1937--the last passenger train--it's at the bottom of page 225. The siding is gone with perhaps just a trace of tie marks in the dirt. (And that very sturdy privy!). Maybe Mr. Walker has found it at DPL and can post it. There are two autos in the scene, and they look to be late 30's type (anyone care to chime in on the cars and their vintage?). Most of the other pictures I've seen have both tracks in place. At that late date I am surprised they would have bothered to remove the siding when abandonment had been in the works for several years. This is something I've been wondering about for a couple of years now. When I have a bigger basement I plan to model Buffalo as it appeared in 1936, but that's a long way off...  

[Chris Walker]

Hi Norm,  talk about deJaVu,  all morning I've had this in my head that we talked about this once before  

.... http://ngdiscussion.net/phorum/read.php?1,264135,264234#msg-264234

still no concrete evidence to say when the Passing Track was removed though, and I haven't found that picture yet at the DPL.

 
from pg225 Colorado Rail Annual No.12:The South Park Line. by Chappel, Richardson & Hauck

[Jeff Young]

That Colorado Rail Annual picture is in a group of photos all taken by Jackson during a trip in 1937, isn't it?

And as mentioned in the NGDF thread, there are 1929 pictures in Platte Canon and Then Some which show the siding still there.

So it would appear to have been salvaged sometime between 1930 and 1936.

The cars don't really help, as they can only say the picture is "no earlier than...".   In this case that would be no earlier than 1934, as the car on the right is mid-to-late-30s.  The one on the left is late-20s or early 30s.

Cheers,
Jeff.

[Norm Acker]

Oh dear, the mind is a terrible thing to waste... chuckle. Thanks for refreshing my memory, Chris.

That`s definitely the picture, thanks for posting it!

What the heck, I like the siding, and when the time comes I'm putting it in... 8)

[Chris Walker]

And thank you Norm, for the trip down memory lane.  I got to rereading the NGDF thread, the C&Sn3 Blog posts on Buffalo and Riverview as well as looking over the DPL pictures. That thread led to a little excursion along the Platte that produced several unpublished views as well including discovery of the Icehouses at Riverview.

[Todd Hackett]

Here is an interesting line-up on the spur at Buffalo. At left appears to be coach 70, CB&Q 573's tender, baggage/RPO 12, and coach 77. The cars on the right are too blurry to ID. It's with photos from a trip to Leadville in December 1936, and appears to be taken on that trip.

[Chris Walker]

Nice Shot Todd.

[Todd Hackett]

Here's another shot from the same collection showing the spur taking off behind the boarded-up depot with #8 pulling RPO 13 and an unidentified coach on the mainline.

[South Park]

  The scrappers had been given coaches and cars for their operations and staged them along the line as the scrapping moved east.

[Todd Hackett]

I think this is the same privy:

[Todd Hackett]

This structure is in town, about 1/2 mile from the depot and Green's store. Note the sign.

[Norm Acker]

Really nice picture find, Todd - thanks for sharing these! The first shot is where the stock pens (and lumber mill/yard?) would have been located, if memory serves me correctly.

As it turns out, my smallish basement has plenty of projects to keep my retirement hours occupied for the foreseeable future, so modeling Buffalo is no longer on my To Do fantasy list. On that note, I do have an extra Crystal River O scale depot kit with the addition if anyone is interested.  :)

[Keith Hayes]

I wonder, Todd, if this is in fact a view of the train used by the scrappers to bed down? The 537's tender seems odd to me, as the locomotive should have been in use up till its return. No doubt it is used for coal storage.

[Robert McFarland]

Not too long ago there was a woman running Green' s store.