Wood Consumption on SVRy

Jim Grigsby and I had a short back channel about wood consumption on SVRy. Here are some fuel reports for Sep. 1916. Presumably each engine crew filed a report at the end of their shift with the wood used and these wood reports were tablulated on these forms showing daily totals. The numbers of the engines in service are across the top, locations of wood stock piles on the left and wood used for each engine in the boxes, with totals on the far right. You will notice that there are 2 numbers in some boxes. I believe this because certain engines were worked a 2nd shift. I have seen this on other reports showing night shifts moving additional loads from Austin to Tipton, Whithney and Larch to be made into larger trains handled by the day shift crews. Possibly this tabulation enabled others to keep wood stocked at the various points along the line. There were modified flat cars with some type of racks that were referred to as wood crates. These I assume were the dedicated cars used in MOW to stock pile wood fuel along the line. Notice that on Sep. 1st there were 94 cords of wood burned that day! As many will know a cord is 4'x4'x8'. That is one heck of a lot of wood. The wood slabs were free and at many mills would have been burned in a wigwam burner if beyond the needs of boiler fuel for the mill itself. Cutting the slabs to uniform length and stockpiling along the line would certainly have had a price tag, but then labor was relatively cheap. I have one time slip in my collection that shows the occupation of an employee as "wood piler", so handling all this wood fuel was an important aspect of keeping the railroad running smoothly day after day. The fuel reports are from the collection at the Eastern Ore. University archive and were scanned by the late David Mayes.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/2012 05:22PM by J.B.Bane.