After leaving the hoist ruins behind at Trimountain No.1, we turned our attention towards finding the next piece in the puzzle – the boiler house. It was from within this building that the steam used by the hoisting engine was produced. Since both buildings would have been connected by a steam pipe we decided to begin our search from what we thought was the steam pipe inlet along the old hoist ruins. But after searching for a a good half hour we gave up and headed back towards the old rail line. It was then that we stumbled upon the ruins we were looking for.

The ruins of the No.1 boiler house were down at the bottom of a steep ridge, on the opposite side of the hoist then we had expected. The first thing that caught our attention were the rock-lined “trenches” along the forest floor. These trenches have become synonymous with boiler house ruins, and are often the only remnant to be found. Above I’ve outlined those trenches to make them a tad bit more obvious.

Here’s a look at another one of the trenches, this one we believe is along the building’s south wall. At the end of this trench sits the still intact foundation to the old smokestack itself, which you can see in the background marked by the arrow. We were previously unsure of what purpose these trenches served, but we had always suspected that they might have been ash traps or even flue’s for the boilers themselves. But these ruins bring up another possibility:

Here’s a closer look at one of the trenches “walls”, showing a glimpse of their interior. Now if these were simply walls for the trench, you would expect them to be back filled with dirt. Here you can see the stone work continues past the wall and under the adjacent “floor”. Perhaps these boiler houses were constructed in much the same was as the hoist, and that these trenches run around the perimeter of a large stone foundation that once supported the boilers themselves. This makes sense considering how heavy these boilers probably were.

Making our way to the opposite side of the ruins we took a closer look at the smokestack foundation. Interestingly the trench seems to have run right under it, which makes me think that whatever the structural purpose of the trench might have been, it looks to have also served as a flue or ash trap.

Inside, the stack foundation is lined with bricks as would be expected. You can also see the opening to the trench at the bottom of the photo.

Sitting nearby to the stack foundation we found a series of iron bolts, some of which were still capped with nuts. This was no doubt the home of some piece of machinery, though I’m not sure what it would be. Possibly a pump to bring water into the building from a nearby reservoir?

Speaking of reservoirs, our last discovery along the boiler house ruins was this short tank set into the ground. It was perhaps only about a foot deep and was surrounded on all sides by walls. One wall (at the bottom in the photo above) had a small slit cut through it feeding to the nearby “trench”.

Found within the tank was this large piece of pipe, which looks to have been broken off at its second elbow. This pipe looks to have been used for water, but in what capacity I’m not sure. Perhaps this was the water input into the boilers? Not knowing the answer we decided to continue on…

Although I had promised daily postings here at CCE, I’m afraid its just not going to be logistically possible. Each of these posts take me about 3-4 hours to complete, and I just don’t have that kind of time each and every day. (Specially considering the hundreds of other projects I got on the back burner). So I’ll instead turn to a posting schedule of every other day (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday tentatively). My apologies, but hopefully this loss of content will be offset by the addition of Flickr content in the near future, so stay tuned…