TENDER WATER SCOOPS

[Anonymous]

By the way.... What was the Actual purpose of the Water Scoop, Like on the 2671 Penn Tenders Thanks Guys!

[artyoung]

Roads such as NYC, PRR, and others built troughs filled with water between the rails to allow engines to take on water "on-the-fly", thus negating any need to stop and lose valuable time. The earliest experiments were done by the NYC, who blew out the backs of tenders until they got the design right (and what a sight that must have been - hopefully no one was injured during the tryouts). Hope you found this interesting.

[Anonymous]

One of my RR videos shows this in action on the 20th Century Limited Dryfus Hudson. A sight to see! Joe

[fjerome]

i have often wondered, how were the scoops retracted and what was the failsafe to retract them before the end of the trough?

[Kooljock1]

The water scoop was lowered and retracted by the cab crew. The opening below the back of the coal pile was the vent where air(and water) would escape as the tank filled.

The worst place to stand was on the vestibule of the car just behind the tender. Many a hobo was frozen to death when doing this in the winter months! There are even stories of folks leaving the door open on the first coach in summer months and having three feet of water cascading down the aisle from the tender vent!

You'll also notice that there were manned boiler houses placed along track pan locations to keep the pans warm in the winter months.

At the end of the pans there was a signal to inform the crew to lift the scoop.

Jon [8D]

[Anonymous]

http://www.pioneer.net/~fitzrr/6020.jpg


NYC was probably the most successful at this though Pennsylvania and B&O used this technology. The central was able to reduce the volume of water carried in the tenders and could increase the coal load as you could take water "on the fly", coal was a different story:-)

[jefelectric]

One of the train magazines recently had a very interesting article about this. If I can find it I will let you know which one.

[ADCX Rob]

Scoop in Action:

http://64.246.11.82/images/4/48WaterScoop.jpg.64889.jpg

Rob

[BR60103]

Most of the British railways had water scoops as well. You can see why when you look at their little tenders. I believe that an engineer was killed when the train on the next track overfloed and knocked out the cab window,
Water troughs were usually laid on a specially flat stretch of track. The scopp was usually screwed down by hand and was impossible to lift out while it was collecting water. At the ends of the trough there would be a grade so that the water didn't flow out -- I think the ends were left off the trough.
There's a stort in Branchline this month about a railroader sent to a new position. He bunked the first night a half mile away from everything and woke up with all the water frozen in the morning. Quick thinking let him scoop a pailful from the water trough nearby. After shaving with it and going off to work he found out what they put in it to pevent freezing!

[ChiefEagles]

That idea was passed on to airplanes used to bomb forest fires. Now that is a site to see. Plane drops down and then scoops up water and water flies out of the vents of the tank in the plane. You are coming down, you hit the resistance of the water, the changing weight of the water going into the plane and lifting back off with the load without diving nose first into the water. Real skill.

[phillyreading]

How long where the water troughs? 50 feet or longer?
I would think that the trough had to be quite long to allow enough water to get into the tender.
Don't think this would be easy to model in three rail as the center rail would need to be removed from the track section or two and I see no way to power the locomotive over the water trough area. Overhead caternary might work but not look as real.
Lee Fritz

[jefelectric]

I have not been able to find the article that I mentioned earlier in the thread. That really annoys me, old age I guess.

I did find after a little reserch that they were normally about 2500' long, not something you would want to model in O gauge as that would be about 52' long.

Here is a short article with general info.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_pan

[palallin]

BTW, no "fail-safe" existed: although the scoops in the US were lifted by power, many are the stories of scoops lost when the crew reacted to the lift signal too late.