Courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
August 5, 1947
This site features daily historical railroad posts from the Big Bend/Columbia Plateau region of Washington state. As a personal site, this is my online filing cabinet of interesting things I've come across about railroading in the area. I know it's easy to grab an image from here and post it elsewhere, like Steve Renfrow does, but if you do, could you at least give this site a little credit? Dan Bolyard
Tuesday, December 31, 2019
Monday, December 30, 2019
Sunday, December 29, 2019
1947 Grand Coulee Industrial Area View
Courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
The long gray building is the Assembly Building, which used trusses made from a former Great Northern bridge. This building is still standing today.
1949 view.
The long gray building is the Assembly Building, which used trusses made from a former Great Northern bridge. This building is still standing today.
1949 view.
Saturday, December 28, 2019
1915 NP AFE Almira Box Car Living Quarters
Friday, December 27, 2019
Thursday, December 26, 2019
Wednesday, December 25, 2019
Tuesday, December 24, 2019
Monday, December 23, 2019
Sunday, December 22, 2019
Saturday, December 21, 2019
Friday, December 20, 2019
Thursday, December 19, 2019
Wednesday, December 18, 2019
Tuesday, December 17, 2019
Monday, December 16, 2019
Sunday, December 15, 2019
Saturday, December 14, 2019
350 Ton Grand Coulee Crane
Courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
May 26, 1948
Section of new 350 ton crane arrives by flatcar at Grand Coulee Dam. To be installed at East Powerhouse.
May 26, 1948
Section of new 350 ton crane arrives by flatcar at Grand Coulee Dam. To be installed at East Powerhouse.
Friday, December 13, 2019
Thursday, December 12, 2019
1947 Grand Coulee Dam Load View
Courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
June 17, 1947
The L-& spider mounted upon timbers on rollers on the trailer is drawn along side the railroad flat car, preparatory to sliding the spider from the trailer to the flatcar. A little blocking under the trailer matches the elevations of the rollers and jacks under the flat car prevent tipping of the car at stages during the transfer.
June 17, 1947
The L-& spider mounted upon timbers on rollers on the trailer is drawn along side the railroad flat car, preparatory to sliding the spider from the trailer to the flatcar. A little blocking under the trailer matches the elevations of the rollers and jacks under the flat car prevent tipping of the car at stages during the transfer.
Cement Handling At Grand Coulee Dam
Article I wrote for Them Dam Writers.
Images courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
While many people know that a lot of cement was used in the construction of Grand Coulee Dam, what is not known is how it was handled.
Images courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
Cement
Handling at Grand Coulee Dam
While many people know that a lot of cement was used in the construction of Grand Coulee Dam, what is not known is how it was handled.
Unlike
bulk loading today, which uses hopper-bottom vehicles to allow the
cement to pour from the bottom, such technology was not common in the
1930s. Therefore, all of the cement was loaded into boxcars. Those
boxcars had a solid flat floor, and the only way to load and unload
was the door in the middle of each side of the car.
Fortunately,
with a project the size of Grand Coulee Dam, a technology had already
been perfected in unloading bulk cement from boxcars, and had been
proven in use during construction of Hoover Dam: the Fuller-Kinyon
screw pump.
This
screw pump was first envisioned by Alonzo Kinyon of the Fuller-Lehigh
company and built in 1918 as a safe way to handle pulverized fuels.
Kinyon discovered that dry pulverized materials assume a flowing,
liquid-like consistency when properly mixed with air. In this
fluidized condition, pulverized materials can move through a pipeline
as a relatively dense column and at low velocity. He was looking for
a better way to move pulverized coal, which was used as a fuel in
boiler furnaces. Companies had used large fans to blow the dust
through ducts, which created an explosion risk. Open conveyor belts
were no better, since the dust they gave off could also spark an
explosion. Area cement producers who were familiar with his product
were quick to adopt his technology as a very practical means for
easily moving the powdered cement. He was awarded a patent in 1925
for the pump.
Cement
for Grand Coulee Dam was obtained from five cement mills located
within the State of Washington. It was transported in bulk via
boxcars which held about 266 barrels of cement, with one barrel
equaling 300 lbs of cement. Boxcars were pulled up an incline to the
unloading area. Unloading from there was accomplished by four
Fuller-Kinyon pumps, each of which resembled a large vacuum. A
horizontal, rotating disk, running close to the floor of the car,
caused the cement to flow into the open end of a small chamber
containing a motor-driven screw, which forced the cement into a
five-inch pipe. Near the junction of the screw casing and the
delivery pipe, compressed air was admitted. The cement was then
forced through hose and piping into the silos. While earlier pumps
were controlled by levers, later pumps at the dam were operated by a
wand with mercury-filled switches in it. The operator could control
the operation of all five of the motors on the pump, moving it in any
direction or changing the rate of feed by a mere tilt of the hand.
Two
men were used to unload each car. One handled the controls of the
pump and the other helped to clean up the car as the machine moved
along.
Each
pump could operate at 600 barrels, or 180,000 lbs per hour, and the
record for unloading was set on November 1, 1939 when one pump
emptied 130 boxcars of cement in one day, or a little over 10 million
pounds.
Storage
of the cement was in eight 5,000-barrel steel silos along the tracks,
which equaled about 12 million pounds of cement. In addition to the
silos were two 5,000-barrel silos for storing the blended product
from the mills.
From
the silos, screw conveyors brought the material into the two
5,000-barrel blending silos in the proper ratio. Underneath those
silos were two compression chambers, each with a capacity of 50
barrels or 15,000 lbs of cement. Compressed air was used to blow the
cement from the chambers via an 11-inch pipeline to the mixing
plants. The pipe line running to the west side mixing plant was 2,000
feet in length, while the line to the east side was 6,000 feet long.
There the cement was mixed into concrete and placed as needed
throughout the dam site.
Movement
of the empty boxcars was accomplished by gravity. The brakes were
released and the empty cars were rolled down the inclined track, past
an automatic track switch, and up to the end of a steep grade. From
there, they again rolled back and onto the main track, where they
were moved away by a locomotive, to be returned to the cement mills
for refilling.
Wednesday, December 11, 2019
The Never Built Northern Pacific Grand Coulee Branch
Article I wrote for Them Dam Writers.
On November 3, 1933, the Northern Pacific filed an
application with the Interstate Commerce Commission for the legal authority to
build the 28 1/2 miles of railroad to the Grand Coulee Dam site.
Charles Donnelly, president of the Northern Pacific, made
this announcement in a telegram sent to the Slokane “Chronicle” in which he
said:
“It is expected the Great Northern will share in the cost of construction and use of the new line, and negotiations in that direction now are under way.”
“It is expected the Great Northern will share in the cost of construction and use of the new line, and negotiations in that direction now are under way.”
The new line would be built from Odair, a station near
Coulee City on the Washington Central branch of the NP, up the floor of the
Grand Coulee to the dam site. The GN will connect with the line via the
Washington Central from Adrian to Odair.
The new line is estimated to cost $750,000.
While Mr. Donnelly’s telegram did not state when work would
be started building the new line, it is believed men will be put on the job
sometime in December to rush completion of the extension by the following
spring.
About 300 to 350 men will be given work building the line,
local railroad officials have estimated.
Ultimately the NP did not build the line, as it was holding
out for a deal with the government for exclusive rights to haul every last item
into the dam via rail. The government balked at this deal and put out
construction of the line to bid, won by David H. Ryan. The NP was to still furnish rails and
fasteners to complete the line, which would be returned when the line was
removed at the end of construction.
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
Bulldozer Joyride?
Article I wrote for Them Dam Writers.
Back around the 1940s, around the time
Grand Coulee Dam was built, power lines were strung from Midway
Substation, near Hanford, to the dam. The construction crew was
working from Midway towards the dam. What they found ahead of them
was the impressive height of the Saddle Mountains.
While the spot they needed to traverse
was not one of the many sheer cliffs, the slope of the soil was still
amazingly steep and several hundred feet high.
And they needed to get down to the
bottom.
With a large bulldozer.
At this location, near the middle of
the Saddles, getting down to the bottom would mean backtracking to
the south a bit and then heading multiple miles either east towards
Othello and coming around the end of the mountains or west towards
the Columbia River and rounding the gap in the mountains threaded by
river and coming around near Beverly. This would add several days to
the project.
One bulldozer operator, who likely had
more guts than anyone else in the crew, had an idea. He would take
the machine straight down the slope.
He fired it up, moved over to the edge,
placed the blade firmly into the mountain, and carefully drew himself
onto the slope. It was not a straight-down story, as the scar in the
hillside shows. At one point the descent veers a bit to the west, as
a ravine was approaching with an even steeper slope. After making the
turn, he kept the blade down and bulldozed all the way to the bottom,
saving days of delays.
1950 scar
This photo, also courtesy of Dave
Morgan, was taken around 1950, when the scar was still widely
visible.
2009 scar
In this 2009 view courtesy of Mark
Danielson, the scar is still faintly visible.
Monday, December 9, 2019
Sunday, December 8, 2019
1947 Coulee City View
Courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
July 27, 1947 view of the South Dam of the Equalization Reservoir under construction at Coulee City. Seen in the distance are boxcars on the now abandoned railroad line that crosses Road 36 NE/Airport Road.
July 27, 1947 view of the South Dam of the Equalization Reservoir under construction at Coulee City. Seen in the distance are boxcars on the now abandoned railroad line that crosses Road 36 NE/Airport Road.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
1942 Great Northern Marcus Bridge Removal Views
Courtesy of the Coulee Pioneer Museum.
June 1942
Images show sections of the bridge being barged down to the site of Grand Coulee dam to be reclaimed for the wood and steel for building projects at the dam site.
June 1942
Images show sections of the bridge being barged down to the site of Grand Coulee dam to be reclaimed for the wood and steel for building projects at the dam site.
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