In terminals, water towers were often kept warm with steam coils inside with steam from shop boilers.
The steam also heating the Roundhouse, and often, the station and bunkhouses.
Steam used to keep boiler on auxilary crane and rotary warm.
Some big Rhouses expressly designed to steam up locomotives within with hot water from plant, rather than heating engine from cold with fire in firebox after repairs or boiler wash out.
Steam lines sent to certain tracks to heat coaches or buisness cars spotted there.
In St. Albans, Vt. on the CV, the roundhouse had a large squirrel cage fan, as in a furnace, blowing air thru a grid of steam pipes and out thru louvres in wall to heat shop area. The fan in turn was driven by a small stationary steam engine.
Lovely to watch.
The soil above underground steam pipes to various structures often was snow free, making long paths to walk on for employees, and the Rhouse cat.
If oil used to fire locomotives and/or shops, there was usually a long single-track shed w/doors into which oil tank cars were shoved to thaw the oil in the cars, would would thicken in transit, a concrete trench btwn rails for hoses and couplings.
The heating done with the cars' own internal steam pipes, the shed lowering the heat loss.
Steam would also be used to heat ready tanks and standpipes for fuelling locomotive tenders.
In remote places Rhouse steam used to generate electricity, run machinery and operate pumps.
Historically, sometimes the Rhouse had the first electric lights in town, a big deal for citizens who still used oil lamps.
Thank You.
PM Railfan MidlandMike If they put glycol water in track pans, the loco's cowcatcher would get a good workout from all the dead animals that tried to drink out of the track pans. One would think this yes, but: 1) IF glycol was used, it doesnt kill instantly. 2) isnt the first part of "cowcatcher" .... cow? The whole purpose of which the cowcatcher existed? 3) i wish folks would read my posts in their entirety. I can distinctly see I typed "I dont know what chemical they used". To think glycol is the only chemical that prevents freezing is ludacris. And in this case, you are 'assuming' its glycol.
MidlandMike If they put glycol water in track pans, the loco's cowcatcher would get a good workout from all the dead animals that tried to drink out of the track pans.
If they put glycol water in track pans, the loco's cowcatcher would get a good workout from all the dead animals that tried to drink out of the track pans.
I'm not assuming anything. I was commenting on another post that did use the word glycol.
Yes, agreed about salts, and hence why the oceans remain liquid, albeit with lots of wave action and currents, to lower temps than fresh water in similar conditions, Overmod. Perhaps I could have been more clear that the context I intended was a global context for glycol, but that nothing except chemicals to prevent unwanted corrosion/deposits/foaming was added to boiler water for steam locomotives. Some roads had excellent water, while the prairie roads had lots of soda and other dissolved stuff in the waters that made running steam a headache. Some never needed heated service water, while others would have gone bust their first winters without it.
The track pans were not filled and left to cool or to heat for long, surely, but if they were filled and had to lie replete for any length of time in low temps and high winds, steam heat was an absolute. Also, the track pan had to service more than one tender on occasion, perhaps with two locos on the head end or one aft working as a pusher. So, they were rapidly filled with pumps when they needed to be filled.
As I stated much earlier, both the CP and CN had to heat water in their towers. I have a Canamodel version of a CP heated tower with the central clapboard column that held a small stove at its base. My father, a mining engineer, explained to me that water in large tanks that sit flush on gravel or soil rarely freezes except for perhaps a surface skim coat or wall coat on the inner surfaces because they absorb heat from the ground. Tanks on stilts with cold air moving around them, though, will freeze solid before too many hours have passed with the resultant maintenance/replacement costs. Those types of reservoires must be provided some form of help to stay above freezing. Certainly external valves providing the flow into tenders would freeze and crack unless the water kept dripping through them was somewhat warmer than it took to freeze them.
selectorI mentioned it [glycol antifreeze], with the caveat added about the prohibitive costs, because it's the only compound I know of, not being a scientist of the physical kind, that is routinely added to water to keep it from freezing.
There are actually other things that work, to a limited extent. Ever made ice cream, or wondered how the water temperature could be so cold when the Titanic sank? Salts can produce varying degrees of freezing-point depression (and boiling-point elevation) -- but in boilers, the cure would be much worse than the disease.
I don't know of any method used for track pans other than heating (via steam bubbled into the pans and/or heating the tank water before it's run into the pans. It might be remembered also that running or moving liquid water is much more difficult to freeze, and that physical freezing requires a large amount of energy, and even then starts only in a relatively thin layer at the top of the pan (which then has insulative value). So in the few minutes between filling a pan and the locomotive scooping water, relatively little icing will have taken place even if the pans don't have steam heat...
I mentioned it, with the caveat added about the prohibitive costs, because it's the only compound I know of, not being a scientist of the physical kind, that is routinely added to water to keep it from freezing. I intended for it to be understood that, ergo, nothing was added to water entered into tenders, no matter how, with the purpose of keeping that water from freezing. Steam was many times more economical.
selectorOnly glycol can be used to inhibit freezing in water that is heated to boiling as far as I know, and I doubt any railroad that was in business more than a single month used any amount of glycol in water used at the rate any given revenue service steamer would use.
I am assuming this -- the original premise, not your discussion of it as quoted -- is humor. Glycol wasn't used as antifreeze on the comparatively tiny volume in diesel cooling systems ... where it was circulated and reused ... because the cost was perceived as too great. Pyrolysis of any glycol in the feedwater, if it were entrained in the steam carried to the superheater, would form an interesting range of deposits, there and via carryover to the lubricated areas of valves and cylinders. Not a good idea.
In the percentage amount that would fit between cost-effectiveness and required mass demand ... nowhere near the kind of mix that produces meaningful freezing-point depression in antifreeze ... I would not expect any azeotropic constituent to have a practical effect outweighing its disadvantages (unless it had other, more significant value as part of a boiler water treatment scheme).
PM, next time don't be categorical in your assertions. You stated that track pans had no heaters. They did...almost all of them where it snows.
You also stated that chemicals were added to prevent freezing. There were no chemicals added to boiler water or water intended for boilers that were meant to prevent freezing. And what I did mean was ethylene glycol, not ethylyn glycol. I assumed we would all know that I was referring to common antifreeze. Well, almost all of us.
selector Chemicals were added to reduce mineral deposits. Only glycol can be used to inhibit freezing in water that is heated to boiling as far as I know, and I doubt any railroad that was in business more than a single month used any amount of glycol in water used at the rate any given revenue service steamer would use. It would have made water eight or ten times as costly to treat and to use in a steamer. Track pans were most definitely heated. Steam pipes.
Chemicals were added to reduce mineral deposits. Only glycol can be used to inhibit freezing in water that is heated to boiling as far as I know, and I doubt any railroad that was in business more than a single month used any amount of glycol in water used at the rate any given revenue service steamer would use. It would have made water eight or ten times as costly to treat and to use in a steamer.
Track pans were most definitely heated. Steam pipes.
No one mentioned this, but chemicals were added. I dont know what chemical, but as railroads added water softners (for anti scaling and anti foaming) they also added chemicals to keep water from freezing. Otherwise, how would you even fill a tender with water from a frozan track pan or water tower? (Which didnt have heaters)
Altho' not an expert on Locomotive Injectors, I understand most could be used to sent live steam 'back' thru the water line and hose btwn the engine and the tender to clear an obstruction in the pipe or to force out hot water in pipe in summer and let cooler water from tender then flow to a balky Lifting Injector.
The same feature could be used to melt ice forming in the line if only one Injector being used, to send live steam into water in tender in severe weather.
Small-diameter pipes were plumbed to bottom of piping and live steam from turret sent to these locations when locomotive standing unattended outdoors on the shop.
An Elesco water pump would be left cycling slowly on steam so it would not freeze.
Shop crews would monitor engines in their care outside re boiler water level, fire condition, and operate various appliances as required.
Electric dynamos had to kept warm, too, as not always on boiler top.
I always wondered how the water was kept warm in 'second' tenders on water districts where they were used.
https://akronrrclub.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/ic-4.jpg
Here one run of just under 200 miles was converted to oil in a coal district so the usual engine could make the whole trip without taking fuel, oil being available at one end, and a tank car on shop steam kept at other end, the engine leaving only twice a week on a three-day round trip journey doing wyft work. Sun off.
An old tender/water car was added and this eliminated a water tower or two in the Depression.
In the Fifites, the usual engine got a larger tender off a heavier scrapped locomotive which it wore until replaced by a 539 S4.
Another reason for the change to oil was the light 2-8-0 c. 1900 used previously set forest fires on coal. Photos exist of a small 2-8-0 retrofitted with a diamond stack to try and supress hot cinders in the Thirties
A bridge was destroyed by a snow slide and hot manifest trains diverted. The Company had to hustle to find many oil-fired engines light enough to travel the 200 miles account 3 bridges on the route too light. En route coaling was a large bucket on a hand crane operated by air from the locomotive being coaled. The buckets filled by the section forces in the interim when engine gone for two days.
To save on costs, old tank cars c. 1912, domes cut off and railed platform installed, were used as canteen cars and wound up in fire and water car service long after steam gone. Alto' water cars, and so labelled, they often still had steam coil in bottom from petroleum days.
Triangularish fabricated oil bunkers inserted in coal space on converted tenders were removed when engines scrapped and put top side down on flats, 2 = a water car.
They were also put at stations on line for an oil fill up once a year.
Often as the Company OCS paint wore and faded off on tanks in water service, the old oil company logos showed thru. Classy.
( Once again, not an expert, but on an oil burner, there was often a zig zag pipe in the bottom of the oil bunker in tender to heat oil as viscosities would vary, some like tar, some almost runny like water.
Different oils fired better at different temperatures and there was an steam oil heater surrounding the oil feed pipe btwn the tender and the Firing Valve and burner to bring oil to required temp for firing.
Live steam could be sent ahead to blow out the oil line to burner, if blocked, or back, if oil line blocked to tender.
Steam in oil heater pipes in tender tank condensed and would collect at bottom of oil bunker and would have to be drained regularly. There used to be steam pipes in bottom of tank cars for same purpose to heat commodity, their ends below centre of car having pipe caps dangling on chains to be applied when pipes not in use in event steam pipe leaked letting cargo drain out thru them. )
Have experience -42 F. and it is COLD! Add wind = Deadly.
( Moisture in train lines from condensate freezes, causing much grief.
In the old days Engineers were to drain main air reservoirs every four hours, but, this was a messy job on some A Units as they were up under the cab floor and the Engineer got soaked with yucky creamy oil/water mix.
A crafty Engineer would try and get the Fireman to do it. or get the Trainman to stand in the way on a Geep on the ballast edge.
Operations with steam in Alaska, Wyoming and Russia must have been a trial.
How one would 'protect' engines such as N&W Y6s outside over a weekend in really bad weather if used where 30 below was the NORM, would be something, even with fires lit, as, usually, the roundhouse would hold only a percentage of locomotives assigned.
One of the best photos in Trains years ago was a Diesel Passenger on UP with a 4-12-2 added on the nose, and they still gave up in the snow and drifts. Great photo!
Have fun with your trains
Sort of. Steam was used in lines to ensure fuel oil was able to flow and to be atomized at the burners. In cold winter climates, particularly with cold air flowing rapidly around tenders while the train was in motion, it wouldn't take long to freeze the water in the tender, although it would take some hours. Water was kept sufficiently warm in the trackside water towers, often with a small fire kept running in a central column at the base of the water tank. The Canadian Pacific used such a system. Considering that trains working hard went through a tender's water supply in less than an 90 minutes, it is unlikely to have cooled water to the freezing point for such a large volume, even at track speeds and very cold conditions.
Were tenders equipped with heaters? I've never seen this...mind you I've only seen a couple of steam locomotives close up.
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