Having been raised in a prairie state served by a Milwaukee Road branch
line, tall grasses and weeds were the only living things along the ROW.
Since real ballast was a rarity nearly all freights had two Alco's even
for the typically short trains (10-30 cars). The weeds crushed under
the wheels made the rails slippery. At one time they used weird looking
devices called weed burners. The problem was that they started lots of
prairie fires and it wasn't long before the weeds grew back with a
vengeance.
I imagine during the steam era, just dumping the ashes and cleaning the
fire on a windy day was a problem.
Bob Werre
PhotoTraxx
On 8/13/12 12:57 PM, tpm1ca wrote:
No idea, Dave. I haven't seen anything written about such fires. I
think the yard was better maintained in earlier times - but by the
1950s it was pretty overgrown, with just one train per day picking its
way through the grass...
- Trevor
--- In [email protected] <mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>,
"ctxmf74" <ctxm@...> wrote:
>
>
>
> --- In [email protected] <mailto:S-Scale%40yahoogroups.com>,
"tpm1ca" <tpmarshall@> wrote:
> > I'm using static grass. I've written about this extensively on the
blog
> > If you have any additional questions, drop me a line.
> >
>
> Hi Trevor, Do you know if they had many fires in the yard in the old
days? ....DaveBranum
>
