Pump house at Jefferson?

[Chris Walker]

No problem Jeff; without the pano, there could be confusion by that string of Boxcars being on the Wye as to where the Sectionhouse was located in relation to the Tank etc.  Given the identification of the other Sectionhouses of that design being posted elsewhere on here, I thought it best fit here in your thread enabling "Search" purposes in the future.

And Robert: I doubt there is a Mason Bogie inside that Pumphouse, just a boiler more likely.

[Jeff Young]

OK, to recap:

1) We've shown that M.C. Poor was incorrect, and that the section house was set back some distance behind the water tank.

2) What appears next to the water tank is the pumphouse (with some nice dimension details provided by Doug).

So, the next set of questions:

Doug's dimensions include a 9' x 10' lean-to.  The (very blurry) shots from the east makes it appear this may be on the back of the building:



However, there's also this shot, which appears to show a single-pitch-roof (which someone might describe as a lean-to) coal bin between the pump house and water tank:



So, is that the 9' x 10' lean-to?  Or were the buildings re-configured a bit between the two dates?  Or were there always a pumphouse, lean-to and coal bin?

And anyone have any idea where the door and window were on the pumphouse?  (Were they usually facing the RoW?)

Thanks,
Jeff.

[Robert McFarland]

Notice the smokestack!

[ComoDepot]

Where did the water come from when the creek was frozen?

The Jefferson Depot is right on US8/285 and would have been located ideally for other uses post Railroad era, and may well have been repainted early on.

[Jeff Young]

Hi David,

Interestingly, the ICC maps show a 3” iron pipe coming directly to the tank from about 1/2 mile up-stream.  A 4” pipe goes from the creek right next to the tank to the pump house, and another 3” from the pump house to the tank.

I had always assumed the long pipe was for gravity-feed, but if you had gravity-feed, then why have a pump?  Perhaps the gravity feed was too slow?  Or maybe the long pipe goes to a spring which still runs when the creek is frozen (but doesn’t flow enough to make going through the pump-house worthwhile)?

Cheers,
Jeff.

[ComoDepot]

Even in the Summer you would need to pump it from the creek into the tank.

I remember a few years back in June, they were doing foundation work for a new build out that way and they were scraping 6 inches or so off a day to let the sun thaw out the next level.

No official frost line in South Park, most people go down at least 10 ft, pretty sure that pipe was not that deep?

[Jeff Young]

Barring that, how about photos of other C&S pumphouses?  (If I have to guess what Jefferson looked like, at least I can make educated guesses.)

I'll start with this one at Dome Rock:

[Don Pacetti]

Hi Jeff, here is the information I have for the Como South Tank "House over Water Spring", which was equipped by a small vertical boiler and a 4 1/2" Cameron water pump. Information is from 1918 ICC Summary - Station Notes:

18 House over Water Spring
#10 10 x 19’ x 5-6 no Paint.
        Roof – G/3 of 1 x 10” as b&b on 2 x 4 @
        2’ cc.. 10” proj.
        Walls. 1 end, 12’ wall ea side + 1 – x part.
        of 12” 0 logs flatted to 68’
        rest of 1” B&B on 2-4 x 4 girts
        dirt fl. –
        ho. Spring for water supply.
        1 door 2-0 x 5’ of 1” rgh B&B on 1 x 4 frame.

Here is accompanying photo:

Here is a wood engraving of the Cameron pump, from the Cameron Catalog:

[Jeff Young]

Turns out Builders in Scale kit #602 is the Jefferson pumphouse.

Their depot and water tank seem accurate enough.  Are their kits usually more-or-less documentary?

[ComoDepot]

More likely it is a generic  design, I would have thought they would have said if it was based on a specific location.

[Jeff Young]

I found a picture of the instructions in an old eBay listing and near as I can make out it does say "We based this model on the pump and boiler house that stood next to the water tank at Jefferson, Colorado".

[Don Pacetti]

Jeff,
I am currently building that BIS pump house kit and its configuration is very different (amount of set-back on the kit's shed-roofed portion is mush greater) and the pitch of the kit's roof might be a bit too flat, when compared to the posted photos; recommend you take a close look at both before buying.

[Jeff Young]

Picked one up at Caboose today.  It looks like it needs a taller stack too....

[Jeff Young]

From what I can piece together from the Park County Archives photos and dates, the Builders in Scale kit (with short stack and no roofed coal bin), appears to fairly well match late-1800s views.  The Water Board special photo (1929) shows a much taller stack, but still no roofed coal bin.  Lastly, late-30s views show the roofed coal bin and no visible stack (so presumably back to short).

The early views also appear to show a shallower-pitched roof (as the BiS kit), and the late-30s a steeper pitch -- but it seems unlikely the would have rebuilt the roof.

I'm still mulling this over but at present I think I'm favouring no roofed coal bin, a tall stack, and a steep roof for my (1928) version....

[ComoDepot]

I am still intrigued about the water supply, is there any mention of wells? If so how deep?

Also begs the question of how much water they would have got through, if it was also allowed to flow through to stop the tank freezing I can imagine a lot, does not come out of the ground much above freezing.

And for it to flow then the pump would have needed to be run pretty constantly, not just to top up the tank as needed.

[Jeff Young]

They used an old locomotive boiler to power the pump, which as I understand it isn't something you fire up on moments notice. But I don't know if that means 24 hour running or not.

No mention of wells at Jefferson.

[Jeff Ramsey]

Hello Don. I hate to say that the ICC image you posted might not be the spring house but rather account 17, structure #8; Tool House with dimensions of 10'3" X 20'3" with eaves at 7'3" unlike 5'3" as the spring house is listed. Notice the spring house has no windows but in the image posted a small window is present matching with the ICC dimensions of 2' X 2'.  I still wonder where that spring house was?

[Doug Heitkamp]

Jeff,

Before you get too carried away…..

I spoke with Jim Haggard (Builders In Scale) years ago about the pump house kit, asking if he had plans or pictures of the real structure. Bottom line is that it is highly "Imagineered". The pictures you posted are about as good as it gets for published pictures. I sure would like to see something better. Remember what was available for reference material 25+ years ago - Mineral Belt books, C&Sng, Museum Annuals, and Poor's books.

As far as other structures, the ICC Valuation tends to list them in order as they are along the line. Assuming that this is the case, here is the order for Jefferson:

Pump House
Tank (16' tall x 24' diameter on tower)
Privy (4' 2" x 7' 6" x 8' 5" @ eaves)
Bunk House (12' 6" x 23' x 8' 6" @ eaves)
Section House - 2 story
Tool House (6' 2" x 8' 3" x 7')
Coal House (7' 8" x 12' x 6' 6" with roof!)
Privy (4' x 5' x 7')
Depot

Here is the Valuation entry for the Pump House -





Doug

[Jeff Young]

Thanks for posting those scans Doug!  

I think they make a better starting point than the BiS kit.  (The window and door dimensions are particularly helpful, even if I do have to guess where they go.)

Odd about the siding though.  Looks more like B&B than T&G to me.  (Then again, the front looks like clapboard, which is extremely unlikely.  So maybe the picture is just playing tricks on me.)

Cheers,
Jeff

[Jeff Young]

I think I finally figured out the lean-to.  The dimensions always troubled me: why not the full width of the back?  Or even wider as BiS imagined it for indoor coal storage?

Then it dawned on me: the stack is in the back 1/4 of the building.  So that's the smokebox end, not the firebox end.  Coal storage makes no sense there.

Ah... but you do have to rod the boiler!  And you don't need much width for that, just the necessary length.  Thus the somewhat unusually-shaped lean-to.

(FWIW, my guess is the interior partition mentioned in the ICC notes is behind the front door, and separates some indoor coal storage -- at the firebox end -- from the pump.)