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Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: [RealSTMFC] Santa Fe Freight Near Victorville - Mystery Loads

Garth Groff and Sally Sanford
 

Friends,

The idea of these being redwood pipes now makes more sense than spools of wire. Even more sense when I remembered that there once was a factory near Antioch, California on the ATSF that made redwood pipes. 

And lookie what I found:


http://www.sandiegoyesterday.com/?tag=redwood-pipe . This one is big enough to be one of the pipes on the flat cars.


Some of these systems endured for years. Although not redwood, you can still see miles of wooden flumes that fed several PG&E powerhouses along the Truckee River between Truckee and Reno from the windows of the California Zephyr. I think those flumes are all dead now, but they were still being maintained into the late 20th century.

Yours Aye,

Garth Groff  🦆


On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 10:49 AM Gatwood, Elden J SAD <elden.j.gatwood@...> wrote:
Ron, and All;

To add:  After the Loma Prieta earthquake, I was assigned to damage assessment in the Santa Cruz mountains outside Santa Cruz, CA.  Even at that late date, there were water districts that had redwood water tanks and redwood water lines, that I assessed damage to, and wrote up for FEMA funding for repair.  They were remarkably durable, unlike concrete or masonry.  One large redwood tank above Scotts Valley, had slid partly off its foundation, but still had most of its water inside.  Remarkable.

Elden Gatwood

-----Original Message-----
From: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io [mailto:main@RealSTMFC.groups.io] On Behalf Of mopacfirst
Sent: Friday, February 21, 2020 10:32 AM
To: main@RealSTMFC.groups.io
Subject: Re: [Non-DoD Source] Re: [RealSTMFC] Santa Fe Freight Near Victorville - Mystery Loads

That's the most plausible explanation I've heard so far.

Comparing the load to the flatcar says these things are about 4', maybe 4'-6" max, in diameter.  That's a reasonable size for water piping.  Two to a car longitudinally says they're 20' long more or less, which was and is a common length for joints of pipe.

I found a 1942 catalog of wood pipe which claimed extensive use, even at that date.  The war probably boosted its use a bit.   Blockedhttp://www.waterworkshistory.us/tech/Pipe/1942WoodPipe.pdf
Not incidentally, they also built water tanks, which if I recall correctly had some use on railroads when they used those external combustion locomotives.

I also ran across this photo -- Blockedhttp://www.waterworkshistory.us/tech/Pipe/1942WoodPipe.pdf

Ron Merrick, piping engineer




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