Jim,
Welcome aboard! Thanks for sharing the pictures.
I must say I’ve never seen a Speeder hauled by a Corvette!
It’s too bad that in the West they tend to tear up the tracks as soon as they quit using them.
Nice pictures and story and welcome to the group.
Hi Jim,
Love the vette on rails. Welcome to LSC. Thanks for sharing your stories and photos
Chuckger
An interesting place Jim. Welcome and thanks for the posts.
Railroad preservation, of whatever form it takes, usually means hard work. Noting, in one of the pics, the oversize chunks of ballast, proves yet again, that their is always a prototype for everything.
More on Anderson Quarry One interesting note - All quarry operations were electric powered. The railroad was mostly steam engines The photo below was taken long after the quarry was scrapped out but you can still see two of the derricks laying up against the rock on the far side of the pit.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Anderson-06.jpg)
When the quarry was in operation, chunks of stone were split off the working face of the quarry and then lifted up and set where you see the people standing in the photo above. But Wait! Sometimes, when a chunk of stone was lifted out, a flaw or vein of discoloration would be revealed on the back of the chunk. You can see two lines in the chunk below.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP3980.jpg)
So when this happened, the chunk was un-sellable as a large chunk. Sometimes they would be cut into smaller stones and sometimes they would be considered “trash.” So the question is then what to do with large chunks of stone that are worthless. The phrase “take out the trash” comes to mind. The quarry had a 1947, American, self propelled, diesel, locomotive crane that they used for hauling the stones to the cutting building or to dump as trash. (more on this crane later)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Roberts0004.jpg)
What they did was haul these useless chunks of stone east and pile them up on each side of the mainline just to get them out of the way. Here is a photo.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Mvc-405l.jpg)
A guy in Georgia bought the land and track and chunks of stone and brought in a highway crane to lift them. Once a week or so he would send up a crew and they would lift up the big chunks and cut them into building block size and haul them back to their office where they would be sold.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Mvc-387l.jpg)
And what would you do if you owned a quarry, had an inexhaustible supply of granite and a big gang of stone cutters? You would build homes and buildings!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP0420.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP0415.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP0414.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP0190.jpg)
Welcome aboard, Jim.
You have the mid-watch.
Bart has the coffee on down in the Goat Locker.
The 10:27 is running late, again, but isn’t she always?
Jim; Very interesting information. In its heyday, the quarry must have used some very strong pumps to keep the water out. I like your speeder delivery vehicles. I have a similar model, but it represents the poor man’s version.
(http://1stclass.mylargescale.com/davemeashey/rrvwbug.jpg)
Best, David Meashey
Thanks guys for you nice welcoming comments.
I enjoy taking and posting photos and telling interesting stories.
I hope that some of this inspires some of you to add quarrying features to your layouts.
Here is a photo of the inside of the main cutting building. A rail spur came into the far end and overhead cranes would lift the stones off the flat cars.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP0393.jpg)
Although the quarry was knows for its large pieces of granite, one of its main products was cut granite building blocks. If you look at granite buildings, most of them only have a granite facing like a brick facing. Here is the main cutter for cutting granite blocks. The cutters are mild steel and are hanging down and were lowered onto a large flat chunk of stone. The cutters were pulled back and forth by a connecting rod while a slurry of water and granite fines were pumped over the block. Here are a few photos.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Cutter-02.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Imgp0406.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Cutter-03.jpg)
There are hundreds of buildings and homes in the area built with granite from Anderson Quarry. Union Church is my favorite!
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP2586.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP2588.jpg)
Here is another video from my speeder for you. The first video I posted was going west across the Rion Causeway. This video is a year later headed east.
Nice detail pics Jim
It’s time to tell you about the “Chinese Wall” now that I have explained that the original R&R RR had access to an inexhaustible supply of large chunks of granite. The wall got it’s name when the first group of guys from the Museum went on a trip to examine the old railroad and see what was there. When they first saw it, someone remarked “It looks like the Chinese Wall” and the name stuck. NO chinese coolies were injured during construction of the wall. Look again at the Google Earth view below. The west end of the was was at Kennedy’s Crossing and the wall extended to the east from there.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/ChineseWall-12.jpg)
The quarries and the railroad shut down and went out of business before the wall was completed. It would have extended just pass the “Sun Kink Area” in the photo above. It was a project to raise a fill across a broad valley. Look at this home made sketch.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Wall.jpg)
The railroad connecting Rion and Anderson Quarries was once a narrow gauge railroad, probably 3’ gauge, based on the length of a few remaining ties that we found. A fill was constructed across the valley for the standard gauge line but the old steam engines had to strain to pull loaded cars of granite up the grade. So a decision was made to raise the level of the fill. Here is a photo of my speeder at the east end of the wall.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP2649.jpg)
You can see the chunks of granite piled up on the south side of the wall. Here is another shot, looking west a bit farther on. Note that the speeder is derailed on the front.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP3753.jpg)
By the way, this was an “easy” derailment. We carried a large ratchet style, farm jack with us. We would jack up the front of the speeder and then push it sideways toward the rails until it fell off the jack and “clanged” back onto the rails. It took us a while to develop the technique but it always worked and the “clanging” never hurt the speeder. (We learned this method from some real railroad guys) The RR Crews laid some temporary track on top of the wall and used a rail road steam crane to lift the chunks of granite up from flat cars on the mainline and they stacked them up neatly and build a wall immediately south of the main line leaving just enough clearance for trains to use the track.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/ChineseWallKrause.jpg)
If the blocks didn’t fit just right, they stuck in a few chips here and there.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/Chinese20Wall.jpg)
There is a “wash out” just about in the center of the wall but Larry and I both know it is actual an area where the rocks settled. We call it a “sink hole” because that is what it is. Here are two shots of my speeder approaching the sink hole from the east.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/WestEnd002.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/WestEnd003.jpg)
And here is a close up of the sink hole.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/MVC-280L.jpg)
We knew that other guys from the Museum had crossed this sink hole many times and never derailed but using our “better safe than sorry” rule when we went back we replaced all of the bolts and rail joiners and added extra gauge rods. The video below was taken later that day heading east along the entire length of the wall. You can hear Larry giving me a hard time about crossing the hole. http://youtu.be/DQfz2CoyL5s
Here are a few more photos… Just east of the sink hole, the stones have slumped out of the wall as settling occurred below them. They are too close for a locomotive or passenger car to pass. But the speeder clears nicely.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP3799-1.jpg)
We painted a nice vertical red line on them so we could watch them and see if they were still moving. After 5 years, there was no additional movement.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP5462.jpg)
Larry and I have put a lot of thought into how to fix this. The easy solution is to use explosives to blow them out. But this would most likely cause the stones above them to fall onto the track or roll down the side of the fill and dam up the creek. The best way would be to disassemble the wall from the top using a large crane and then reassemble it properly. Unfortunately, there is no way to get a crane to this spot on top of the wall and the existing track would have to be completely rebuilt to get a railroad crane to the site. Someone else will resolve this one day.
Still more photos, from the top of the wall. Walking east from the west end of the wall you can still see the old ties.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP3581.jpg)
Farther east it is pure stone but you can see where they filled in between the large blocks with rubble to prepare a road bead for relocating the main line.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/WallTop-02.jpg)
This is why you can’t run a tracked construction crane along the top of the wall to the sagging stones. To the left of this “hole” is a nicely build three arch stone viaduct where the creek runs under the wall. The RR Crew never widened it. I guess that was on their “to do” list and they never got to it.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/IMGP3945.jpg)
I once rented a light plane and pilot and we flew back and forth along the entire railroad taking photos. The Fairfield County Airport is parallel to the Museum’s track on the east end. The pilot was a young kid, highly skilled, but nervous because we were doing low level photos right in the flight path to the airport. This is one of the better photos I got.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/SCRM/ChineseWall-09.jpg)
Time for an interlude… An old 8-Ton Vulcan sits at Rion Yard, with the works partly disassembled, lost and forlorn. The owner quit the Museum years ago and although several guys have contacted him to buy it, he doesn’t want to talk about it.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/7-8%20Scale/Mvc-531-1.jpg)
I decided to build a model of it so I crawled all over it measuring everything and got to work. Barry at Barry’s Big Trains made a power unit for me using parts from his 2-6-0 drive but with 7/8" scale wheels.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/7-8%20Scale/VulcanDrive-1.jpg)
At the time my step son had a “Big Hauler” and I sort of liked its looks so I made up 10 “kits” with the help of a local shop and a friend.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/7-8%20Scale/BigCritterKit-1.jpg)
Here is my finished version in 7/8" scale. The engineer is a modified Laura Croft Action Figure.
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v329/Trainman-2/7-8%20Scale/BigCrtr-05-2.jpg)
I had one of those. Neat kit, wish I had it back.