Re: Alpine Tunnel Construction Camps

Posted by Dave Eggleston on
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/Alpine-Tunnel-Construction-Camps-tp19236p19277.html

Thanks, Rick. Fascinating info on the air hose issues and turning considerations. Thanks for sharing!

Ok, we are looking at the same picture. And it turns out the photo in Helmers on page 123 is printed backwards. Is the understanding that the flanger is sitting on one leg of the wye, specifically the wye’s east leg?

The photographer is looking south and the train is pointed towards the tunnel; equipment is east of the water tank. My read has always been that the business car and combine stand on the main, with the flanger on the long siding on the east side of the main, not on the east leg of the wye. Why? 1880s photos show that siding following the main south past the depot into a curve west, presumably merging near the water tank, east of the single span short bridge over Chalk Creek. The siding may well have extended to the point where the flanger is sitting. What am I missing in the photo?

If the flanger is sitting on the east leg, then there's a wrinkle. This location for the wye doesn’t jibe with the 1903 wye’s location! The 1903 wye, seen on the ICC map, was completely west of both the tank and the Chalk Creek bridge. Again, am I missing something?

The omission of the wye in the employee timetables (1884, 1889, 1898) and from other documents still leaves me uncertain of the wye’s pre-1903 existence. Yeah, documents conflict and/or are missing but as much as I want to say either "there was a wye before 1903" or "there wasn't until 1903" I can't. Unless I'm mis-reading that DL&G photo.

At best right now I believe: a wye in Hancock makes absolute sense from day one when we look backward from our present place; we have no solid idea if or when a wye was installed prior to 1903; a photograph may suggest a wye in the DL&G period; one was definitely built in 1903; there’s a possibility there were wyes in two different locations at two different times; in 1903 the staff in Denver did not believe an earlier wye had been at Hancock.

I don’t take some of Ferrell's maps in the book as definitive. The 1885 map does not show the Hancock coal dock and shows even track centers for the two sidings despite photographic evidence to the contrary. And the date given is not attributed to any document. Another map, of the "Alpine District", in the same book, draws Hancock's trackage differently, unlike what we see in any photos or the ICC maps. Again, was this based on a document that wasn't attributed? My takeaway has been these maps are more suggestive than definitive.

The Tunnel engine house was designed seven years prior to the UP acquisition of the plow. Without getting into the very sticky question of when there was a functioning turntable in that building, was a 50' table large enough to hold 064?

It just all leaves me thinking that a map of Hancock would show the 1903 wye as a solid line, but an earlier wye as a “believed to be” dashed line.