I’m building the service facility for steam… turntable, roundhouse, sand, tower, ash pit etc… and on a lot of plans I seem to see a wash place near the ash pit shown. If before wash racks… what was this? A water hose for each side and a lattice and pit under the track/? No pit but wood slats to keep mud below foot level? How should I model it? Thanks for helping me out here.
This is probably the hoses used for washing out and quenching the fire in the ash pan. The hoses usually have a piece of pipe on them long enough to reach into the ash pan while the engine crew or hostler spray all areas of the ash pan while not reaching into the area under the firebox.
Roads which took pride in their steam passenger power frequently had regular rotary-brush car washers in their service areas, supplemented by workers with hoses, buckets of soapy water and long-handled brushes. Other roads settled for a simple arch of pipe over the track, with multiple ‘shower head’ sprayers.
John Allen modeled the latter type with a piece of tubing. In those pre-health-Gestapo days, he simulated the spray with a puff of cigarette smoke.
Thanks for the help. Sounds like hoses, buckets and guys are enough… or the single rack over track and no pit or boards on ground. I wasn’t too clear in my question. The wash location is separate on a lot of plans from the ash pit and water hoses.
Appreciate if others can comment.
That all depends on the era and the railroad you’re modeling. That is where you need to do the research. Look at the prototype for what they had, when they had it and the way they did things in that era.
For example, wash racks could be a bare spot on the ground with wooden walkways to something like a modern automatic car (automobile) wash. Only outside and bigger.
In the beginning days of steam, fires were dumped and ash pans were cleaned out on the track. Later a simple brick, stone or concrete lined pit was used and cleaned out by hand with shovels or buckets. The bigger the operation the more ash railroads had to deal with. Soon automated ash plants were used. The ash was dumped into a wagon in the pit and hoisted up a tower to dump in a hopper or gon. The most modern ash plant on the N&W was based on ash handling plants used in power houses and other coal fired furnaces. Ash was dumped into a brick lined pit and was washed down with high pressure water jets into a sluice that emptied in a open tank. Ash and water was pumped in a silo over a service track and separated. Water was recycled to wa***he pits. A open hopper car would be spotted under the silo when it was time to empty it.
many railroads used saturated steam and oil mixed to wash running gear. Don’t forget that dirt, dust, small stones, gravel and sand in a bearing could cause almost immediate wear problems so frequent and thorough cleaning was necessary. Saturated steam is very wet and is in the verge of turning back into water. It is also hot enough that it will evaporate leaving the oil behind for lubrication. Workers often wore rubber aprons that were knee length and rubber boots to keep somewhat dry. This was probably a labor job and most pictures I have seen show minorities holding this position.
Thanks for these additional comments. Very helpful.
Hal
Some i’ve seen had a u-shaped pipe structure over the track, numerous adjustable nozzle heads projected washing solution evenly over the boiler and running gear as it was shoved through by a second engine. Final cleaning, such as windows and numberboard glass were done by hand folowed by a wipe down, also done by hand.
Dave