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| Robert Stears Collection |
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Saturday, January 26, 2019
Thursday, May 24, 2018
Roper Sez: It's Alive! It's Alive!! | 4 Comments - Click Here :
What does this mean? I don't know yet. But the line through Dickey is open once again.
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
"Along the Blue" #31 | 0 Comments - Click Here :
Table d'Hote on Snowbound Train
Served from Sample Cases of Packing House Agents. Another Rich Tale of Winter Travel on "High Line" of the C.&S.
Summit County Journal; March 20, 1909;
Tales of adventure by the passengers on the Colorado &
Southern train No. 71, which was blocked in the snow near Buffehr’s Siding on
Wednesday night read like fiction, but E.W. Reeme, agent for the Western
Packing Company, who was one of the victims, says that every word of it is
true. Those who do not believe what he says are requested to ask George B.
Christensen, the Armour agent about it. James L. Smith and Robert J. Clark, of
the Leadville Light and Power Company, were also on the train and are prepared
to verify his statements, relates Sunday’s Herald Democrat.
“We left Kokomo
Wednesday evening about forty minutes late,” said Reeme in telling his
experiences yesterday. “It was then a warm spring day. The sun was shining
brightly, and there was not a bit of wind. When we neared Robinson a strong
wind came up. At Buffehr’s spur we found a freight train stuck in the snow,
which had been blown across the tracks.
“The passenger
engines were cut loose to take the freight back to Kokomo. By the time they
returned the snow was several feet deep. Half a mile east of Buffehr’s the
engines were taken off to do some bucking. They bucked so hard that soon they were
nearly a mile away from the rest of the train. By the time they were ready to
get to the coaches, a ten-foot drift had been blown across the track between
the engines and the cars. It was impossible for them to get through. There we
were compelled to stay all night. It was cold and stormy, and the passenger had
had little to eat. While no new snow was falling, the wind was picking up what
lay on the ground and hurled it about the cars as if intended to wall us in so
that we could never get out.”
“There was no
sleeping for any of us that night. We tried to keep up a fire in the little
stove, but we had to hug up against it closely to keep warm. Fortunately there
were no women nor children on the train, and we acquired considerable heat from
the sulphurous talk that most of us put up in discussing our hard luck.”
Here is the worst
part in Reeme’s story, but he says it’s just as true as the rest of it. When
the passengers got hungry, he and Christenson opened their sample cases of
packing meat and distributed it among their fellow sufferers.
By taking a
sardine and wrapping a piece of chipped beef around it, they formed a first
class sandwich, which went pretty good on an empty stomach. Some pickled tongue
took the place of vegetables and they had smoked ham for dessert. After it was
all over, someone ordered soup. Christensen opened a box of pork and beans,
mixed it with gold water and served as good a dish of soup as any caterer ever
set before his guest.
On Thursday
morning the passengers walked to Kokomo and got some breakfast. That afternoon
they learned that the rotary was coming. The same evening, the rotary passed
through, and later in the night came back with the passenger coaches and all
but one of the engines. In rescuing the last engine, the fan of the plow was
broken, and it was necessary to go back to Como for repairs.
Friday morning
prospects for getting home were no better, so Reeme and Christensen decided to
walk. They bought two pairs of skis and started overland, following the general
route of the railroad over most of the way.
While their trip
was not as dangerous as it might have been, they suffered more from sunburns
than from anything else. They have felt no ill effects from eating the meat
samples, and so far as they can learn none of the others passengers did,
either.
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Saturday, October 21, 2017
Saturday, October 14, 2017
Saturday, October 7, 2017
Saturday, June 24, 2017
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Jefferson General Store | 0 Comments - Click Here :
Jeff Young - While the original Jefferson general store was lost to fire ca.
1929, a number of photographs exist of the front, including a nicely
orthographic one from which to take measurements.
We can surmise that the back included a loading dock of some sort, given its proximity to the siding. The Fairplay Flume reports on the 27 March, 1908 that “Merchant Lilley is unloading a 40,000-pound car of stock salt,” an operation large enough that we can assume a high volume of railroad shipments.
A PDF containing high resolution versions of the elevation drawings can be found in the files section. Happy modelling!
Jeff Young
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| Jefferson store. Late 1800s. Park County Archives |
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| Jefferson store. Early 1900s. Park County Archives |
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| Jefferson store. Water tank is in background. 1926 Park County Archives |
Documentary evidence of the remaining sides is harder to
obtain. One long-distance photo exists
of the 1929 Denver Water Board Special, which gives some clues to the North
side, but the South and rear will have to remain conjectural.
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| Denver Water Board Special in Jefferson. January 1929. Denver Water Board |
We can surmise that the back included a loading dock of some sort, given its proximity to the siding. The Fairplay Flume reports on the 27 March, 1908 that “Merchant Lilley is unloading a 40,000-pound car of stock salt,” an operation large enough that we can assume a high volume of railroad shipments.
Further evidence appears on Feb 4, 1905, when the Flume reports
on the sale of the store: “A fair estimate of the amount of money changing
hands through this transfer is $10,000,” which is quite a sum in the early 20th
Century.
A few changes were made to the trim details in order to ease
construction in HO scale. Also shown in
the following drawings are some Grandt Line and Tichy Train Group windows and
doors which, with some modifications, can be made to closely match the
prototype.
Doors and window modifications. Each pairing shows the original on the left
(red rectangles indicate areas to be removed; yellow rectangles areas to be
modified) and the results on the right.
In the end I couldn’t make my peace with having a 6-pane transom
over the front doors and a 5-pane over the rear, so I scratch-built my rear
freight door and transom.
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| Alternate detail for scratch-building rear transom window. |
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| Work in progress. |
A PDF containing high resolution versions of the elevation drawings can be found in the files section. Happy modelling!
Jeff Young
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