Saturday, July 14, 2018

(61) Golden Reef Mine Tramway Chapter 3 Tower Construction


GOLDEN REEF MINE TRAMWAY
New Tram Tower Construction
Chapter 3 of 5


This is the third part of the Golden Reef Mine Tramway project. The second chapter gave us the design of the tramway.



NEW TOWER CONSTRUCTION



Since we could not remove any of the towers from Continental Mountain we decided to build our own towers. The first thing we had to do was to go to the towers and take detailed measurements so we can determine what it will take to build two towers.

Tower Measurements We made several trips to the towers still standing to take measurements. The two pictures below show each piece of wood and its dimensions:
Tower Materials Specifications The table below shows the original tower timber dimensions on the tram towers. The numbers in the parenthesis are the dimensions of the timbers used on the towers. he larger timbers add to the design and strength of the towers.




Golden Reef Tramway Visits We made a number of trips to the lower part of the tramway on the Chatman’s Homestake Patent. We needed to find the metal tower supports and the moving cable guides. The wheels for the moveable guides were found at the original location of the stamp mill and I purchased another one at the Tucson mining artifacts show. There are (4) tower locations on the Chatman’s patent, Towers #10, #11, #12, and #13 that had fallen down, but still had some metal artifacts on them. See the topo with GPS coordinates (colored towers) superimposed below:



Tram Tower Metal Parts We spent some time going over the (4) tram towers on the Homestake Patent after getting permission to obtain metal parts and cables on the (4) towers from Joni Chatman, the owner of the Homestake and the stamp mill. She donated the stamp mill to the Museum several years ago. The group spent many hours searching the fallen down tram towers on the Homestake Patent. We found everything we needed except for one of the metal struts for one of the towers. The following parts were retrieved from the towers on the Homestake:

Tram Tower #10 This tower is in bad shape with most of the hardware missing. There were (2) of the struts and strut supports, 1/18” & 7/8” cables running through the tower remaining.





Tram Tower #11 This tower had (2) sets of the 7/8” moving cable guide bases, (1) 1 1/8” stationary cable guide and support, 1 1/8” & 7/8” cables, and (2) rod struts.




Tram Tower #12 The wood in this tower is in bad shape and there are (2) base plates & plate guides and 1 1/8” & 7/8” cable running through the area. 


Tram Tower #13 This tower was very close to the stamp mill and what was the lower station. The only things left are the foundations and 1 1/8” & 7/8” cables running through the area.

Lumber Purchase After we got all of the measurements we went out to purchase the wood. We purchased rough cut fir and many of the dimensions exceeded the dimensions of the original wood. The picture below shows the pile of wood to construct the (2) tramway towers. We marked each of the timbers with their designated use:
  


Interlocking Timbers The next task was to assemble the two towers. Most of the pieces were cut and notched and interlocked to give them added strength since they were going to support cables that would have over 4,000 pounds of tension (weight) on them during operations. The pictures below show the use of notches in the construction of the towers:




Test Cuts Made on Certain Tower Pieces The two pictures below show another example of the craftsman ship required to fabricate a quality tower. The metal guide in the picture sits on the cross members on top of the tower that will hold the 1 1/8" cable that could hold over 4,000 of tension when the towers are in operation. The piece of test wood was used to make sure that the cuts are accurate and tight fitting when cut for the actual pieces on the tower.


Tower Assembly We built part of the tower on the ground to make it easier to put it together. Once the tower “half” was assembled on the ground it was then up righted and the rest of the tower assembled. The picture below shows the up righting of the tower.





Backstay Installation Once the tower was up righted we had to manually install the other major components. This was a teamwork effort as seen below.
 


Tower Assembled We finished the wooden part assembly of the tower with it standing upright. We moved this tower aside and constructed the second tower. It was very handy to construct the towers under this shade. It kept the sun and rain off us during construction.


Tower Construction Complete We added the steel parts of the towers including the upper tower braces and the moving cable pulleys that keep the moving 7/8” continuous cable off the ground when the tram bucket is not by the towers. We also put wood preservative on the tower to keep the wood safe from the Arizona sun.





Tower Transport We put the towers on a trailer and then moved them to the museum to their final resting place.




This completes the construction of the tram towers. The next section will go over the installation of the towers on site at the museum.



NEXT: Chapter #4 Tram Tower Installation
 






No comments:

Post a Comment