Water Tower For Loco's

[twhite]

Jet rock's right on mountain railroading. When I was a kid, I used to figure out how many miles it was from Cisco Grove to Truckee by counting the number of water tanks. Rio Grande used auxiliary water cars on a lot of its locomotives, especially on the Moffat Tunnel line and between Grand Junction and Helper. They looked like ordinary tank cars. On the Donner Pass line, even though the Espee Cab-forwards had enormous tanks, it wasn't uncommon to see a train stopping at almost every water tank it came up to. And with one AC on the head, another in the middle and possibly one about six cars ahead of the caboose, it was quite a sight to watch them fill up.
Tom

[Jetrock]

70-100 miles? 100 miles was more like the distance between division points. In mountain country one uses a lot of water--generally every 20 miles while pulling a grade (say, the western slope of the Sierra Nevada), and generally steam engines would stop at each one!

[Anonymous]

This is one of those things of where your gas mileage may vary. A typical layout may need a tank/spout for the mainline, tank for the service facilities, tank for the yard, and tank for the branchline. Fuel capacity to water refill figures I've heard have been from 1-1 to as much as 1-8 depending on the engine and application.
HighIron mentioned Strausburg filling for everytrip. If he is relating this to the rail museum then this is usual for museums, parks and other rails for tourist service. They've found it's a cheap crowd pleaser for their audience to watch water tank duties and boiler blow down.
Refill from trough was used by a few railroads with PRR and LNER being the better rememberd. LNER had the Royal Scotsman use these to make its premium passenger run.

[joseph2]

The Pennsylvania RR also used track pans to pick up water on their eastern mainline tracks.

[Anonymous]

I read somewhere that a 2-8-4 used on avg. 225 to 250# of coal per hour.
Add to that stopping every hour or so for water and oil for the wheel brng's.
How did they make any time?
It seems that 1/2 of a train crew's shift was spent keeping the enging in RR's
were thrilled with Diesel.

[randybc2003]

IHC has a nice open top water tank. I built a kit of it w/ modifications according to MR's Loco Facilities book. Easy to kitbash according to your preferences. Life-Like also has several water tanks. Check old MR articles. For a terminal - rule of thumb: enough water in the tank to fill a tender for each loco in the roundhouse. Several Craftsman Kits available too. [:)]

[Anonymous]

I use a Tyco water tower kit built. It came out rather well although I think as mentioned previously there may be better watering towers out there.

I was told while visiting Project 819 which is in Pine Bluff Arkansas, a 4-8-4 undergoing restoration. That the engine likes to get a refill of water 50-60 miles.

Strasburg usually watered the engine almost with every train that left on a trip (9 miles out and back) several times a day I may be wrong but this for me was a long time ago.

Water for engines in one area may be too different for that of a different engine. Sometimes they brought along a tender with just water in it.

NYC used water scoops to literally scoop up water on the fly without stopping. I think they had to slow that train down to below 40+ mph to keep the tender from falling apart during the scoop.

Little things like lube oil on the driving rods themselves to the amount of sand that is availible for the grade as well as the features installed also determines a engine's need for TLC after so many miles.

I think roundhouses also had water too. While "Booting" steamers in the morning they would fill the tender which took time as they added water to the boiler.

[fec153]

Depending on location, i.e. plains-mountains, 70 to 100 miles between tank towns.
Also depended on size of loco.
Flip

[Anonymous]

Tom
I got the steel water tank from SS LTD.
Thanks to all for the info. It must have been frustrating for an engineer to get a 50 car train up to speed only to have to slow down in a short while for water. I seem to remember reading of the Trauf idea. Can you emagine the frustration that a "Casey Jones" type must have felt?

[twhite]

I don't know if they're still available, but Atlas put out a pretty handsome water tank--a little smaller than the Walthers, but at least it had the correct chain for the spout mechanism. I have one on my layout (along with the Walther's wood and steel tanks) and it's the one that always gets the most comments. Went together very easily, but like T-Stage says, paint the components before you put them together. The Atlas came in some pretty garish colors, before I painted it, as I remember. But it's sure a cute little Devil.
Tom

[tstage]

I thought I read that it was closer to 100 miles between "fillings" but I could be wrong. (Now you know why the southwest railroads, like the Santa Fe and SP, were so eager to switch over to dieselizaton. [:)])

I also saw on a video one time that, in some remote places along a line, they might have long troughs of water to fill up the tender while the train was still moving! These troughs were several hundred feet long. The engineer would throw a lever, which would drop a spring-loaded "door" (on the underside belly of the tender) and fill it up in a matter of seconds. Would work great in the summer but don't know about the wintertime though. (Wonder if there were ever any miscalculations?)

Ken, which water tower did you decide on? (Since you referred to steam locos stopping and "filling up", I'm assuming you are referring to a water "tank" rather than water "tower". If not, then you can ignore the rest of my ramblings.)

I purchased the Walthers wooden one back in June and have been very pleased with it - EXCEPT for the thread "rope" that comes with the kit for supporting the counterweights and pulling down the spout to fill the tender. I ended up replacing both "ropes" with some more realistic looking 40? link chain. (I'd like to also fashion some lead counterweights to replace the plastic ones supplied in the kit.) If you are partial to wood, American Model Builders makes a nice looking "laser-cut" version. Walthers also makes a steel tank that comes with a water column or standpipe.

Just wanted to also pass along a few words of advice: When you are painting your water tank, paint as much of the bottom support posts and "frost box" as you can separately BEFORE gluing them together. I didn't.[:(] I was smart enough to keep the bottom and top separate while I painting them but I still ended up putting in about 12 hours just painting the silly thing. Looks nice though.

Ken, I don't know if all this has been helpful for you or just a long-winded "ear full"...

Tom

[Virginian]

Generally speaking, steam locos could go further on the fuel they carried than they could on the water. That's why auxiliary tenders became popular, to reduce stops. Given the power expended hauling the train, one could back calculate this, but I am not up to it today, yet.

[Anonymous]

Tenders were designed to supply enough water to get the loco to the next tank down the line. It seems to me that around 40-50 miles was the distance.

[Anonymous]

I'm adding a water tower to my layout, and I got to wondering how often the
average Steam Loco had to stop and "fill up"? I know the BIG BOY had to use
much more water than a 4-6-2 , but there must be some kind of average.
Example: The run from Chicago, IL to New Orleans, LA.
How many stops did it make?[?][?][?]