Sandboxes

Pontiacguy1 writes:

The best working sander I've ever seen was on Harry 'Schorcher' Bean's Southern Pacific 2-8-0. He had a tank made under each running board that looked like an air tank, but which held sand. He had a manual valve that would drop the sand down in front of the wheels. He used a slightly oversize pipe, and he had a handle that came out at the back of the cab that would activate the valve. Gravity feed only. He had to manually activate each side, and his technique was to open and then close one side then the other in quick succession when going up a grade. His locomotive would pull quite large loads for its size, no doubt because of the superior adhesion that it had.

PennsyK4#612 writes:

We've got working sanders on our K4, and I can get you drawings to build Pennsy style sanders. We use finely screened casting sand and we have enough to last our lifetime. Originally we use a squeeze bulb to "puff" air into the traps. That got tiring on Mill Creek RR mountain division, so I got a small 12V air pump like the ones for in an aquarium. Now we flip a switch in the tender and we have continuous flow of sand when needed.

Doc Jones writes:

You might be interested to know that one of the reasons steam locomotive sandboxes (sand domes) were placed atop the boilers was to keep the sand dry via the warmth of the boiler. I'm not sure if the lagging was intentionally left off that part of the boiler shell upon which the sandbox rested.

Jim Valley writes:

Using sanders on steam locomotives was something of an art. The sand was very fine and was dried out in a special facility before it was put in the dome on top of the boiler. Some engines used in mountain territory had extra large domes or even two of them.

The engineer might run his sander when starting the train or in the event the drivers slipped under load. Sometimes when climbing a grade the sander was used non-stop. The sand was shot under the lead pair of drivers (using compressed air) and a special steam pipe and nozzle was mounted behind the rear driver to wash the grit off the rail so the rest of the train wouldn't run over it, thus limiting unnecessary wear on the rails.

Steve P writes:

Steam sanders were widely used in the us in the 1920s. One well known example of the practice was on the NYC Hudsons.

References

• Working sanders, Modeltec, February 1986
• Sandbox - Wikipedia