Sand House

"piemanlarger" wrote

Sand was usually delivered to loco sheds in railway wagons, generally needed drying (and keeping dry so it would flow freely) and was loaded onto locos by hand.

John.

cheers John, The sand house has large doors, they look big enough for a wagon to enter? Would this be the case or would the wagon hae been shunted up to the outside of the doors and unloaded by hand? I suppose almost any open 3,5,7 plank wagon could hae been used for the delivery of sand?

Have you ever tried loading dried sand by hand? It keeps running through my fingers. ;-)

Regards, Greg.P.

"Gregory Procter" wrote

A Yorkshireman would never have that problem! ;-)

John.

There's tight, there's ducks' arses, then there's Yorkshiremen - and proud of it!

Never ask a man if he's from Yorkshire. If he is, he'll tell you within the first few minutes of the conversation. If he isn't, there's no need to embarrass him.

The message from Richard contains these words:

Your average Yorkshireman was almost born a Scot...but there was a severe shortage of generosity genes.

Never understood why UK railways never put the sand boxes on top of the boilers nor used mechanical sanding towers. And don't say it couldn't be done. It was on those American wartime 2-8-0s, and they had decent cabs as well.

Loading sand by hand using a bucket, how quaint.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway

The message from "Roger T." contains these words:

And they looked terrible. As though the "designer" said "OK, Boiler, frames, wheels, tender. What else do we need...?"

Bits Stuck Anywhere.

Appeared to work OK, though.

They still load coal by hand on the IOM steam railway.

They're frozen? Thick sand?

Why would you want sanding towers when the sand boxes are under/on the footplate? Why would you put sand boxes on top of the boiler when the man with the bucket is on the ground? ;-)

No gaps through which anything can slip.

In 1899 and 1901 GWR experimented with this on the 2 'Krugers' the 4-6-0

2601 and 2-6-0 2602. The practical disadvantages outweighed any 'theoretical' advantage and the GWR abandoned their use.

Apart from the obvious aesthetic problem of disfiguring the engines 'lines' which was not acceptable to the GWR in the age of late Victorian / Edwardian England, the problems of lugging a bucket of sand onto the top of the boiler to fill it, the impossibility in wet weather of stopping water getting in as the hopper was filled causing blockage as the hot boiler then caused the damp sand to cake together and the problems with cleaning out blockages in the long sand pipes were too many disadvantages compared to the use of 'running plate' sand boxes.

Alan

If asked I would have said I thought the GWR didn't use sand, or was that just not blowing out of pipes by the wheels?

"Gregory Procter"

They could have had sanding towers with two hose that would reach down either side of the engine.

:-) But you see my point? Sandboxes on top of the boiler, and with boiler heat available to keep the sand warm, is a much better idea than hanging them underneath the footplae.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway

"Alan P Dawes"

Aesthetics aside, as I wrote in my previous post, putting the sand box(es) on top of the boiler keeps the sand drier, thanks to boiler heat, and they are easily filled from sanding towers. Boiler top sand boxes were the de facto North American way of placing the boxes, and they use(d) BIG sand boxes. Believe me, if it was cheaper and better to have running plate sandboxes, the North Americans would have adopted the idea really quickly. I also think that many (most) European locos had boiler mounted sand boxes.

In fact, boiler mounted sandboxes were, world wide, far more common the UK style running board boxes.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway

No doubt due in part to the restrictions of the British loading gauge.

I was just postulating a loop of (logical) thought that would block advances. Here in New Zealand sand boxes were where they should be.

Anyone who has ever tried to recreate prototype weathering will know that under the footplate is no place to try to keep anything dry.

Regards, Greg.P.

"MartinS" <

A sand box takes up no more room than a steam dome.

The USRA 2-8-0 had boiler top sand boxes.

-- Cheers Roger T.

of the Great Eastern Railway