Okay, this is a new one on me. What merchandise flows in and out of a laundry in Santa Cruz in 1905? Firewood? Starched uniform knickers?
On another note, does anyone know of more unusual train service?
Hey Chip;
Caustics for washing with (lye), uniforms might be another…
Chineese Coolies!![:D]
Now who says I ain’t politically correct!![swg]
Odds are that with the use of steam boilers to heat their water, they would have required quite regular coal deliveries in hoppers or gons (as did a great many industries of the period). Shipments of machinery, general equipment and laundry products would account for occasional boxcar set outs.
CNJ831
CNJ,
I assumed that fuel for the boilers was the main reason for the track, but did not consider coal. Coal was expensive on the West Coast and they didn’t need high hear to boil water. Since the map did not show an oil storage tank, I assumed the boiler would be wood fueled as lumber was a major industry in the area.
Still I’d love to get a materials strategy going so I can place it on the layout as an industry. I mean how many ops sessions serve a laundry.
Santa Cruz is not on my list of approved Pullman laundries (that would be located in Richmond) scratch that idea. I wonder where the SP sent its commissary laundry (Oakland would be my guess)? To warrant the infastructure you described, obviously they were a consumer of commidities such as caustics, soaps, starches, water softners, they may also have had the capacity to render soap which required tallow, rendering fats and fragrances and possibly incomming and outgoing bundled laundry by the carload. I would suspect that any boilers would be oil fired, add tank cars to the equation. Geez, come to think of it, wouldn’t want to have a cornfield meet between said oil tanker and my boxcar of tidy whities![(-D]
Dave
Modeling the mighty SP 3/16 to the foot
The laundry itself. Hospitals for as long as I can remember send their laundry to a regional laundry facility. There is a regional facility on Tilbury Island just outside of Vancouver that does hospital and commercial laundry from as far as a thousand miles away. It comes in by the tractor trailer load. Could have just as easily come in by train.
Brent
How about wooden barrels of soap? Wooden barrels of starch? Coal for the water heaters.
Remember in 1905 everything came by rail-even your Warm Morning wood stove you ordered from the pages of the Sears & Roebuck catalog.
Since I am modleing the Los Gatos to Santa Cruz main of Southern Pacific, had it survived into the 50’s…maybe I can help.
There was a similar facility at Wright (or Wright’s, if you prefer) or Alma, I can’t remember which, around the same time. It, however was serviced by wagon.
The facilities boilers were initially wood-fired, then converted directly to oil around 1917 or so.
The products would have included carloads of lye and surfactants such as (ugh) borax. Lime in sacks would also be on the agends. Remember, laundries away back when were pretty rough on clothes, and most of the clothes were wool. Also, a laundry like that probably sold work shirts and other types of clothing, so inbound shipment of finished clothes probably would not be out of the question.
Other items might have been paper, similar to kraft paper in rolls or sheets and twine in bulk. Passenger trains might drop off lcl lots such as writing paper, and other minor supplies such as thread, rose oil and the like…
The occasional large item for repair of a press or the boiler works would show up occasionally as well.
Since Santa Cruz was a fairly large community (relatively speaking) with a pretty good local industrial base including sand and aggregate mining as well as lumber and milled wood products, not to mention the sea-based fishing industry, the local laundry would need to use some pretty powerful cleaners (cleansers, almost) to get the stink and grime out of clothes.
Rolls of wrapping paper…the brown packaging kind, to wrap individual bundles of an item. Gowns, shirts, trousers, overalls, sheets, drapes, …
Or nothing.
From reviewing several year’s worth of Sanborn maps researching my own railroad, I have noted that many buildings changed owners quite frequently. So it might have been factory two years ago, it might be a laundry today and maybe a warehouse two years from now. The rail spur would remain.
Drive through any rail served industrial park, there will be dozens of "rail served’ industries that don’t use rail service. So while it could have been rail served and could have recieved and shipped loads of laundry, it could have just as easily not recieved or shipped a single car.
In many cases carload rates were lower than LCL rates. So if you were shipping a couple tons of something it might be cheaper to load 4 tons in a 25 ton cap boxcar and ship it as a “car load” than ship 4 tons LCL. So they might have recieved smaller shipments by “car load”. The question, even at that, is, could they have stored several tonns of whatever and how long would it take them to use a shipment. Fuel I could see them using a lot of since it takes lots of coal/wood/oil to make steam. Soap? Starch? Borax? How many loads of laundry can you do with a pound of soap? How many loads can you do with 2000 lbs of soap? How many can you do with 4-10 tons of soap? How long would it take tham to go through that many loads? If it took a full pound per load and you had 4 “washers” taking an hour a load, that’s 4 lbs/hr, or 96 lb/s day or 20 days per ton, or 80 days per car load (assuming 24 hr a day operation and 4 ton per car shipments). The railroad isn’t going to want them to hold the railcar for 80 days, so the plant would have to be able to hold 4 tons of soap.
Probably loads of laundry or fuel would be your best bet.
If you look closely it appears the boiler is outlined in the upper lefthand corner of the bui
Dooh!
A couple questions were cleared up by expanding the area around the building.
4mer,
Do you have any names of reference materials I might look into? The only one I know is Rick Hamman’s California Central Coast Railways.
This isn’t a bad start:
http://s145079212.onlinehome.us/rr/spc/intro.htm
There are several pages of info on the prototype and the model railroad the guy is building.
You can also type the following keywords into your search window:
Wright’s, CA
Boulder Creek
San Lornzo River Canyon
Railroads of Santa Cruz
Southern Pacific Los Gatos Branch
All kinds of good stuff will come up…
or you can obtain any number of books on the South Pacific Coast Railway, the original builder of the line from San Jose through Los Gatos and over the mountain to Santa Cruz.
You can also obtain the excellent book “Railroads of Los Gatos” as it has many photographs of narrow gauge equipment and facilities, as well as photos of the Los Gatos side of the line.
4mer,
Deja Vu. Just as I was starting to read the web page you sent, I remembered a conversation I had with Charlie Comstock about his foray into narrow gauge. A picture started to form of him talking about Santa Cruz mountains. Then when I got to the end, sure enough his name was there.
I’ll have to give him a call.
Thanks.