During the last few work sessions last fall with the Ridgway museum members, while restoring the Guston depot, I collected GPS coordinates at several locations. These include:
1 the Guston depot
2 the eastern and western ends of the eastern trestle, and the eastern end of the western (approx) trestle, over Red Mountain creek, just south of the Joker tunnel
3 a couple of points on grade just west of the Joker (could be points on a siding that was there)
4 the end of the northerly descending grade, north of Ironton, right where it starts the (approx) 90-degree turn east into the flat marshy ground
5 a couple of points further east of point 4.
Number 2 (east end of east Red Mountain creek trestle) gives a reliable GPS position in both the east-west and north-south directions. Number 4 gives a reliable east-west position.
Now, since the 1892 Kelly survey was recently found, I can recreate the exact coordinates of the grade, within about ten feet, from directly above the Joker, down to point 4.
The survey gives distance in feet for every tangent section of track,
as measured along the grade (if any). (It's important to understand that the actual distance traveled in an overhead map view is reduced by the cosine of the angle of the grade. Kelly was measuring the length of the rail.)
The survey also gives the length in feet of each curved section of track, along with the degree of curvature (130 feet radius being about the maximum), and the total degrees of turning. (I ignore the cosine thing here for convenience. Lots of math in spiral curves.)
I'll be using TurboCAD to recreate, in "map view", the entire mainline grade from the Joker to the approach to the wye north of Ironton. Initially, I'll use the east trestle at the Joker as the start point, and let the grade wiggle around as it will to its end. Then I'll pivot the whole mainline around the Joker trestle point until the northern end lines up with my point 4.
That will give me the exact (+/- 10 ft) alignment of the mainline. That in turn will allow me to locate the GPS coordinates of the water tank and bridges.Then I'll snap everything onto a map.
Stay tuned for the results. Please forgive any delays; I'm also researching info on RGS locomotive 36.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/21/2014 04:20PM by capchris.
