Re: The C&S Coal Chutes: Four bins? Six Bins? Eight Bins? Twelve Bins?

Posted by Jim Courtney on
URL: http://c-sng-discussion-forum.254.s1.nabble.com/The-C-S-Coal-Chutes-Pine-Como-Dickey-Pitkin-and-almost-Breckenridge-tp4269p4343.html

John wrote in response to my Schwanders question:

Per information Rick Steele shared with me: on (and before) August 28, 1919, the Chalk Creek Mixed, from Buena Vista to Romley, coaled up at the 14’ (W) x 79’ (L) x 7’ (H) coaling platform in Buena Vista.

I've been rereading Margaret Coel's Goin' Railroading.  In Chapters 13 and 14, Sam Speas, Jr,  describes his adolescence in Buena Vista, while his father Sam Speas, Sr was engineer on the Chalk Creek Mixed run, from 1912 to 1922.  

Sam Jr describes working part time for Fred Hyde, the C&S Yard Watchman in Buena Vista, shoveling coal into his father's locomotive, with his brother Neil.  After school they would shovel 4 tons into the tender, making 10-cents per ton. (I knew my kids were lazy as teenagers!)  Evidently, they moved coal from the coal bins in Chris's photos above.

So it seem that the water tank and coal chutes at Schwanders existed only to service the helpers over Alpine and Trout Creek passes.  When those routes were closed after 1910, Schwanders ceased to be of use. If the coal chutes at Schwanders were built in late 1900, they saw less than ten years of service.

Also described in the book is how Sam Speas, Sr, "bought the water tank at Schwanders for twenty-five dollars. He and Conroy (his fireman) steamed up locomotive number 73, coupled on two flatcars, and started for Schwanders. After steaming into Schwanders, we threw cables around the pillars of the tank.  It came crashing down. We loaded the redwood onto the flatcars and chugged back to Buena Vista where, not long afterward, Dad transformed the South Park water tank into a porch on our house."