Re: Lava Tank - pump restoration

Earl, it did run in 1970. At one point after trains had started running, I was sent with a man (whose name I have forgotten, but he must have run it previously for the Grande) to assist him in getting the pump running, and filling the tank.

When we got into the building, the first thing we discovered upon filling the water jacket around the cylinder was that the water jacket had been allowed to freeze with water in it, and had a crack. The first hour or so of our time was taken up by brazing the crack in the cast iron so that the jacket would hold water again.

Then the man heated the glow plug with his blow torch and tried to start the engine. The process involved using compressed air previously stored in reservoirs on the wall (from the last time the pump ran) to turn the engine over. The thing was massive, like the one in the Chama coal tipple, only bigger. The air supply remaining in the reservoir wasn't enough to get it started, so the fellow left me there while he went back to Antonito to get an air compressor.

After recharging the air reservoir sufficiently, we tried again. It was a tricky operation, where after getting the engine spinning, you had to quickly turn the air off and the fuel on, and hope the engine would catch before the engine stopped turning. We were successful after a few tries (each time having to start by heating the glow plug red hot, then spinning the machine with air, then switching over to diesel fuel).

When it did start, the noise inside that stone building was deafening! But the son-of-a-gun pumped water, the pipes held, and eventually put water in the tank. I don't recall how long we ran it, but it seems like over an hour, and I don't recall how one knew when the tank was full. There may have been something like a return pipe that ran back to the pump house to indicate that the tank was full.