Top Of The Mountain Siding - Official Work Thread

[John Kokas]

Steve you stole my thunder with Mt. Snowdon - just what I was thinking.  A bit more modest but I think the conservancy would jump on board if they were included.  I believe in previous discussions (old web site) there was mention about using the ROW as a walking trail to connect with the conservancy area for the near term.  Also Wayne, right on with spring switches; WK&S has never (as far as I know) had an accident with them.  Same with New Hope and they have some major carloads running over it everyday.  Even SEPTA (philly transit) has commuter rail lines with spring switches for passing sidings in use everyday.  Bottom line, if you don't inspect it, maintain it, and pay attention to it during switching, ANY switch can be dangerous.  

[Wayne Laepple]

On the subject of spring switches, I'm just now back from a visit to the Strasburg Rail Road, where the runarounds at both ends of the railroad, as well as the passing siding in the middle, are all outfitted with spring switches. Seems to work just fine for them.   I'm just sayin' -- not advocating for the WW&F to do the same.

[Hunt Dowse]

I have to admit I don't really know my switches yet, so I looked up switches in Wikipedia to get an overview.  It's a good article and down the page there's a picture of the "three-way stub switch at Sheepscot station on the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway"!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_switch

[Mike Fox]

The more I think about it, for safety reasons, I would be against the spring switches. I'm not saying they are unsafe or anything, but if you are going to change direction, a set of eyes on the ground verifying the switch was properly lined would be the safest way to go. There is not a lot of room there and the engineer/fireman might not be able to see the points from the cab. If we had all kinds of room so you could see them, that would be one thing. But we don't.

[Paul Horky]

So my mind isn't playing tricks there are 2 water tanks. is the old one we got from the the SRRL in good enough shape that it could be used atTOM as part of the system for fire protection? The tankcar would still be needed to transport water up to TOM then transfered to the tank for addisonal capasity

[Stephen Hussar]

Thought this view looking north beyond the end of track might help explain Top of the Mountain a little better...image is from early spring of this year.

[Vincent "Lightning" LeRow]

I think we should lay the siding in it's origional configuration. then, instead of stationing an engine or running the switch, put a winch at the end, like the origional SRRL had in the old stone fort to pull in the dead locos, and wind the cars into the siding.  it would definantly be uniqe and probably the safest way to go. I do believe that most of our cars have brakes.

[Paul Horky]

A cable safe I think not. Cables around the public is asking for trouble. Cables can part and if under tention can wip around with such force it can cut a person in two.

[John Kokas]

Thanks Steve for putting the picture back up.  As they say, "a pic is worth a thousand words".  Look closely - If one was to shave 3-4 feet in elevation from the high point (about the height of the sign on the right side), bring some of that material back towards end of track, you would have a nice runaround area and a smooth approach to the station.  The rest of the spoil goes the other way to fill the first wash-out.  This is a really basic grading job - get me a dozer........

[James Patten]

So my mind isn't playing tricks there are 2 water tanks. is the old one we got from the the SRRL in good enough shape that it could be used atTOM as part of the system for fire protection? The tankcar would still be needed to transport water up to TOM then transfered to the tank for addisonal capasity

The tank from SR&RL, which is a standard barrel-shaped steel tank, is fairly rusty and has a substantial sized spot which has eroded out part of the steel.  The pitting was why we decided not to use it. 

[Mike Fox]

What the picture doesn't show is the percent of grade there. At the road crossing, it goes from a .5% incline to about 3%. Changing the elevation at the end of track will only make things worse.That will make the end of the siding virtually unusable as it would be unsafe to leave a car there unattended.

  I have drawn out a map and will post it as soon as the photo host I use comes back up.

[Wayne Laepple]

I may be a bit dense, so perhaps someone can explain to me the logic of parking the tank car full of water at TOM. Unless a locomotive happens to be nearby, I don't understand how that can help the Alna Fire Department, since the siding is inaccessible to normal vehicles. If the train is not running, there would be no means to move the tank car to a more accessible location. Perhaps Paul Horky has a better idea -- place the unused water tank somewhere close to the yet-to-be-built fire road and use the tank car to transport water to it. Add a valve and fittings near the bottom of the tank so fire vehicles can draw from it and a bottom drain to empty it before winter.

However, some thought may be given to outfitting the tank car with flood nozzles that would allow a good wetting-down of the roadbed on the mountain a couple of times a day during periods of high fire potential. In addition, we may want to consider a clamp-on spark arrestor to be placed on the locomotives' stacks during those times. See photos of B&H nos. 7 and 8 at times. Finally, we may want to consider having a track car and our fire car follow trains by 10 minutes during extreme fire danger periods, such as is done on the Durango & Silverton and Cumbres and Toltec. We also did this years ago at WK&S.

[Mike Fox]

We have run the fire train, immediately following the steam train, pulled by the Brookville. We have found a gap of only a couple of minutes is all that is needed to find the hot spot. This was before the spark arestor in the 10 was fixed. Now if anything hot comes out the stack, it's usually water.

[Mike the Choochoo Nix]

I think I was the one that suggested the runaround at the Top of the Mountain during Thursday nite chat. My idea was that a northbound train would pull into the siding. The loco would uncouple and pull past the second switch and then reverse going southbound and slightly downhill to run around the train. A third switch would have to be added to continue building track toward Head Tide. To review, the points on the second switch would be in the siding not in the main track.

Mike Nix

[Ken Fleming]

I started as a "greenhorn" on the Mount Rainier on the fire patrol.  It was 2 men with two Indian pumps, two shovels and two rakes.  We used a 4 man speeder.  I am sure that #51 could serve the purpose.  We only operated when the fire threat was posted by the state as High.  We followed the train by ten minutes.  They would finish their run a round by the time we arrived at Mineral.  The fire patrol was required by the State of Washington.  At TOM the fire patrol would wait on the main and then take the siding when the train is ready to depart South.  If a problem occurred that the patrol could not control, the dispatcher would called and the fire train would be dispatched.