Model Railroading > Mt St Helens commemoration ...

In observation of the 40th anniversary of the Mt St Helens eruption, I dug out my supply of St Helens ash that I swept from a deck years ago and we're starting to use it as gravel road material on our Sugar Pine Lumber Comany layout. It's the right color, texture and grain size for HO scale gravel, and we think it'll look pretty good.

Jeff Johnston
trainvideosandparts.com

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That's cool. Great idea.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

You just took recycling to a new high!
Bob

Yuck had to live in it for a while when visiting my mom by Moses Lake not anything I want to think about stuff was terrable to live with.

You might want to keep an eye on that, the ash has a very high sulfer content...

The potential sulfur and/or magnetic iron particle content doesn't seem to apply here, and even if the ash is high in sulfur, how would that be a problem? Very little of the material gets picked off by a magnet, so we probably got non-ferrous dust, and the material on the layout, which is a fine visual or cosmetic layer and not a giant high-volume pile, gets glued down pretty solid so it's almost encased in the adhesive. Use of the ash is not something that's being added to our "things to worry about" list.

Jeff Johnston

I tossed my bag of St Helens ash after we figured out it smells really bad, as sulphur tends to do. Also heard stories about it being corrosive, which might effect the sealer for example. But if you don't have problems, it is a nice historic touch.

Wow, we must have the "benign" ash, it has amost no smell other than kind of like dirt or, ahem, ash. Last time I smelled sulphur was when we put it on our ankles in the midwest to keep the chiggers at bay.

Jeff

That ash is a pretty good abasive so make sure to keep it away from motors and gears and such.

My sample was from the I-5 side, we were chasing the Weyerhaeuser logging roads at the time. I'm not a chemist or a Vulcanist but Volcanoes are known for smelly sulphur and usually some level of corrosive effect on paint and simple materials, the Yellowstone Geysers are a well known example, not too bad until the wind changes. I dug this summary out of the web, if you can't smell it the ash could simpy have very low levels of Sulphur ( S ). The link implies the content varied with location, probably with day of eruption as well:

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1029/GL007i011p00949

The BN noted the ash displaced lubricants, on the roof fans for example. That may also explain some problems that I had with my Subaru axle joints and driveshaft joints after my Mt Shasta adventures.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/18/20 13:11 by TCnR.

Burlington Northern's volcano.

https://www.historylink.org/File/8741
 

Please don't order any more of it!

map

This was posted to Trainorders some years ago.What a mess.
Not my photo.
Regards,dK

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Back in the late '80s my wife and I, after touring the devastation, bought a beautiful hand-blown glass Christmas ornament made from Mt. St. Helens ash at a shop just off I5. The sales pitch was, "Get one now before all the ash is gone".

Tom M.

Living in the Yakima Valley on that day - can't believe it was 40 years - and the ash we got was more of the consistency of playground sand, or for my needs, HO scale ballast.  I happened to be adding a section to my layout at the time and used it diluted with white glue and never had a problem with it and it lasted until the layout was dismantled when I went off to college a couple of years later. 

Now that would be a weathering challenge !!!  ---------- Ken 

Kemacprr Wrote:
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> Now that would be a weathering challenge !!! 
> ---------- Ken 

Looks like all you'd have to do is spray it with Dullcote and roll it in flour. (-:

best regards,
Mark G.

Kemacprr Wrote:
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> Now that would be a weathering challenge !!! 
> ---------- Ken 

Well, Ken.....I have to do somthing of that nature for the limstone quarry and processing plant/ loadout that will serve the integrated  mill......bjut of course, not nearly as extreme... :)

Bob

Perhaps a coat of dullcoat and put some flour in front of a fan...I might have just found the answer to my own project...lolol.

Bob

MarkG Wrote:
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> Kemacprr Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Now that would be a weathering challenge !!! 
> > ---------- Ken 
>
> Looks like all you'd have to do is spray it with
> Dullcote and roll it in flour. (-:
>
> best regards,
> Mark G.

The morning it popped, I was on a Frontier 737 from Missoula to Denver, via Salt Lake. We had just reached cruising altitude and the captain came on the intercom noting the news and directing passengers on the right side of the plane to look out the window. Over the next few minutes, we could just make out the vertical ash plume growing upward. 300 some miles away. 

Missoula was basically shut down for several days. When my field crews returned their rental trucks, Hertz charged us for the extra days, despite the fact that the airport and their rental booth had been closed the whole time. You would have been a fool to drive through  the ash plume, almost certainly would have clogged the air filters   They got a letter from me on company letterhead making it clear that if the situation were to reoccur, we would direct our staff to remove the air cleaners and drive the vehicles back to the airport, dust or no dust. 

In in those days, we rented dozens of trucks per year from Hertz, so we weren’t just any old customer. 

As for the ash having sulfur in it, well, you use plaster, don’t you?  That is calcium sulfate.