It looks like the reason we couldn’t find a turntable, was due to the fact that there wasn’t one. Even though one was installed when the railroad was first built, it was later removed. Turntables, it turns out, are not the easiest things to operate in the Keweenaw winters. Quincy removed the turntables at some point after the turn of the century, opting instead to install Wye tracks to turn the trains. (these are tracks laid out in a triangle with approaches on each corner point)

Yep, you found the water tank used by the Q &TL, this one is of a unique design and has been the focus of narrow gauge modelers for years. The upper room contains a cylindrical tank ( oriented horizontally ) for the water, which is quite un-like nearly every other water tank associated with steam railroading. Most others were simply an upright cylinder of wood staves held together with bands ( like a wood barrel ) or metal ones made of many plates rolled to a curve and riveted together. As mentioned regarding the difficulty in using a turntable in the winter, water tanks, in northern climates needed to be heated. In many instances they had what was known as a “frost box” under the central portiion of the tank, it was basically four walls with a door in one of them that extended from ground level to the bottom side of the tank and surrounded the supply line. The walls and the door were typically insulated. Inside the frost box was ofter a small stove, the heat from which rose and helped keep the bottom of the tank, the supply line, and the water already in the tank from freezing. And this one, for the Q & TL was no different, it required heat as well, and if you look at the wall on the lower side, the side facing away from the roundhouse, you’ll see a hole in that wall the size of a stove pipe, which is where the combustion by-products would have exited the building, essentially, the whole lower level was the “frost box” and by housing the storage tank within an enclosed wooden structure, it helped to insulate the tank and water from the freezing cold associated with copper country winters.

There would have been a gravity-balanced ( with counter weights ) spout on the outside the fireman would have used to direct the water into the cistern of the locomotive tender, I’m not sure where the valve, which regulated the flow of water, was for this particular tank.

If your light had been better, in the upper level of the structure, you would have seen a bunch of 2″ diameter pipes, about 12′ in length stacked up against the back wall……extra or old boiler tubes is what they are, and when there a couple summers ago we even kicked up a thin copper ring, a ferrule used in conjuntion with the tubes when re-tubing a boiler.

The machine tool in the roundhouse you mention is, if I remember, a small shaper, or planer, for metal working. The back room of the roundhouse was likely the tool room.

Thanks for the great insight cucountry1. We were sure it was a water tank of some design, but we were expecting something closer to the “old west” barrel types seen in movies. There was a pipe along the outside of the structure I assume this was for exhaust from the heaters as you say or perhaps the vent for the tank itself? I didn’t take many photos, but I did take some video of the structure. I’ll try to post it on the site so everyone can get a closer look…

Its great to hear from people who known much more about these things then I, people will find comments like yours very interesting. Please keep on posting!

I lucked into seeing the updated comment from cucountry1; is there some way to know when new comments are made without scrollling through all posts?

Hoser – Now that i am getting more comments, this has become a problem that I need to fix. I’ve been working on some code that would list any recently commented posts and display that list on the right sidebar at the top of each page. Still working out the bugs, but I hope by Monday I’ll have it working.

Great!

Just saw the new one on the round house too – fantastic stuff!

Just found a great photo from the Keweenaw Digital Archive of this same water tower in use over a hundred years ago. A lot less trees and brush on the ridge, and also the snow fence on top has long since been removed. The engine is the #1, which I think is still at the mine site.

I ran across this on ebay an thought it was pretty cool…http://cgi.ebay.com/Q-TL-Water-Tank-Durango-Press-HO-Scale-NIB_W0QQitemZ280257747209QQcmdZViewItem

Makes me want to go out and put together a model railroad – something I have always had an urge to do for years now. Although I don’t have the patience or skill to make all those models. Now it looks like I could just buy them! I’m not sure if that would be as much fun though…

After seeing pics of Kevin Musser’s Copper Range model and reading some of his how-to’s, I’ve been kicking around building a small model railroad. There’s a 4′x4′ ledge/shelf thing over our stairs that is just dead space right now and I ran the idea of putting one there by my wife and she’s cool with it.

Now I’ve gotta decide between the Q&TL or C&H.

I think I have that kit somewhere in my vast boxes of model railroad stuff in da basement. To bad when you work for the real thing, it kind of wipes that desire to model the little ones anymore. I do have 3 brass models of the Q&TL rock cars.

The Durango Press model of the Water Tank is based on Paul Meier’s article in Model Railroader (or Craftsman?)circa. 1967 of which he freely admits contained some errors. The turntable was removed in 1912, at the same time that they purchased #6. I am of the opinion that not only was it hard to maintain in the winter, but also, #6 may have been too big for it. Physically, it would fit, but it wouldn’t be balanced.