Sunday, April 23, 2017

Spark Arrestors outside the C&S

As Mac Poor pointed out in his 1948 article, the C&S was often hampered by the problem of causing fires along their rights-of-way and thus eventually created what many now call a "Beartrap Spark Arrestor."  This feature has become nearly synonymous with the Colorado & Southern narrow gauge being eventually applied to all their engines with the exception of No. 70 when it was converted to an oil burner.

In poking around for some info on this contraption I came across two curious sights on the internet.  The first is a photo of unknown origin (at least to me.  I forgot where I found it. Sorry!) showing what appears to be a logging railroad with a massive balloon stack version of a spark arrestor with not just one, but two tubes to drop the cinders along the right of way.
Curiously, it appears that the rail on the left side of the locomotive is not present!

Next, I found a photo of the D&RGW 346 wearing a Beartrap spark arrestor at the Colorado Railroad Museum in a 2015 photo.  No. 346 did wear one of these during the time that the C&S borrowed it in the 1930s, but I didn't know that it sometimes wore it at the museum.  Maybe those of you who are Colorado residents can let me know if this is a regular occurrence or not.


As I was writing this, I remembered that on a visit to the Durango and Silverton in the early 1990s, I saw one of their locomotives sporting one of these spark arrestors too.  I have a video of this, but need to locate it to post.

1 comment:

dwarfnebula said...

http://www.drgw.net/info/RidgwaySparkArrestor