Water: A Well Needed Resource

The well at the Gladstone Shops was crucial to operations, supplying between 80,000 and 100,000 gallons of water per day for steam production in the boiler and engine rooms, power for shop machinery, heat during winter months, and locomotive tenders as engines left to pull trains on the mainline. Because fire was a constant fear, well components were installed below ground, the Shops maintained an eight-man fire company with fire pails throughout the buildings and a hose cart with 700 feet of hose, and if fire damaged the well mechanism, water could be pumped temporarily by using locomotives stored in the roundhouse. By the late 1940s, after the railroad Shops had closed, a 150-foot water tower was built to serve property renters. The well house stood circa 1975, and today the planting circle in the sitting area marks the eight-foot-diameter well shaft, with limestone blocks from the upper portion of the well still intact below ground. After demolition in 1979, the well's location was lost, but interviews, aerial photography, historic map research, Global Positioning System (GPS) data, and magnetometer survey relocated it in September 2000; excavation uncovered an eight-foot-diameter limestone shaft filled with debris, which was cleaned out in 2001 to a depth of 35 feet before the casing was found, and material from an improper seal to only 155 feet was removed before the entire well was capped to modern standards. The well had a steel casing driven 258 feet down and then an open hole in bedrock; although originally drilled to 750 feet, silt gradually filled the lower portion because the casing did not reach the bottom, leaving it 640 feet deep by 1900, 615 feet by 1936, and 568 feet by 2000. Initially the well used a deep well pump that required considerable attention and repairs, but by 1900 Mr. G.D. Brooke, StP&D General Master Mechanic, had improvised a compressed-air system that pumped water into two 50,000-gallon tanks, using shop air pressure of 125 pounds per square inch reduced to between 60 and 100 pounds for effective pumping and less pipe vibration.

Maplewood, Minnesota · United States