Coal, sand, water and ash disposal for engines is located on one of the short tail tracks of the switchback in Ridgeback. This group of buildings was built as a removable diorama that I would be able to enter in model contests for judging. The water tank and treatment shed was the first model structure that I built. It was designed and built in 1964. The large sail wheel for pumping the water from a well was based on an article that I had seen in a mod el magazine. The challenge came in building the shed around the angled support timbers of the windmill.

 

The rest of the diorama was designed and built later and was first entered in a model contest in Ottowa, Canada. This photo shows how the diorama fit into its location on the layout.

The coal/sand bin structure is very unusual. The floor of the bins rises in a plane which is perpendicular to the track at the point of the coal delivery chute. The walls of the structure are parallel to the spur track from which coal and sand are hand-shoveled into the bins from gondola cars. Since these two planes are not at a right angle to each other, the design of wall and floor dimentions and shapes are unique. The civil engineer for the Jewel River Railroad delighted in matching his skill to the task and the result was of such interest that it was written up in the Journal of the Engineering Society of America (June 12, 1901).

Here is a detail shot of the coal chute with its rack-and-pinion drive worked by hand from a wheel at the ground level.

Sand flows from the upper bin, through a pipe, to the small shed at the side of the structure, where it is dried on a special stove and taken to the sand domes of the engines in buckets by our friend who is resting on the porch. The long plank leaning up against the wall serves as a walk-way from the porch to the running board of the engines.