Some of the folks still working on track in Como were kind enough to measure the "mystery" wheelset for me today;
Hopefully my wonderful drawing makes some sense. The gist of it is that the wheelset in question has 24" diameter wheels and the axle is 64" from end to end. This compares to a typical D&RGW narrow gauge wheelset (with the same style collard axle) with 26" diameter wheels and an axle width of 61". Thus, whatever this wheelset came out of is 3" wider than a standard D&RGW narrow gauge archbar truck.
To address a couple of possibilities raised in other posts;
- This wheelset is known to have been stored in a gondola on the Georgetown Loop well before the White Pass passenger trucks showed up and is known to have been purchased in Alamosa by Lindsey Ashby in the early 1970's. Just to be sure though; Will do you have a way to measure the wheelsets under the Hinman or take a quick look at them to see how they compare to the wheelset in question?
- The wheels themselves are of a type that is too new to have been used on the early locomotives that had tenders with 24" wheels. The wheels on those tenders would have been cast iron with ribbed backs, these wheels appear to be steel with a "modern" profile, much like the K37 tender wheels.
Other than locomotive lead trucks and the aforementioned early tenders, the only use of 24" wheels that I could find on the D&RGW were dump cars OR and OS and ditchers OX and OW. Photos of OR and OS taken at the end of their lives show them to have cast iron, ribbed back wheels (most likely the ones they were built with) while OW and OX were self propelled and the wheel set in question shows no evidence of ever having any type of drive mechanism attached to it (OX was driven by gears on the axle, while OW was powered by a chain drive)
Jason Midyette
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/15/2019 05:00PM by Jason Midyette.