I have heard that on some lines, the trains did no stop at a water tank. Instead, the Loco/Tender dropped a duct and that picked up water from a trough located between the rails. This was at certain intervals on the main line I guess.
1. Is this true.?
2. How did this work exactly.? Loco water needed to be Treated/Pure didn't it.? Was there a way of protecting the water from dirt and "contamination"...some kind of way to keep the trough covered until the train was ready to make a pick-up.?
Thank You
kenny dorham I have heard that on some lines, the trains did no stop at a water tank. Instead, the Loco/Tender dropped a duct and that picked up water from a trough located between the rails. This was at certain intervals on the main line I guess. 1. Is this true.? 2. How did this work exactly.? Loco water needed to be Treated/Pure didn't it.? Was there a way of protecting the water from dirt and "contamination"...some kind of way to keep the trough covered until the train was ready to make a pick-up.? Thank You
Yes, its true. The NYC and the PRR were among the biggest users.
Generally, water would not be "sent" tothe pan until the train needing it was was near by, but no other effort was made to keep it clean.
As locos evolved, and tenders made larger, the practice became less common. Maintenance of the trough was one of the problems.
Sheldon
There was a thread about this topic a while back on one of the Trains Magazine's forums. If someone who knows how to search for it would find it and post the link on this thread, Kenny would get much more information.
Johnny
Two very large tenders, that of the Penny's J1 2-10-4 with doghouse and the NYC's Niagara 4-8-4, had scoops. They were both heavy on coal and needed to pick up water on the fly. For example, most of the massive modern tenders used by the big roads during the war had water capacities of about 18-20K gallons. Then Niagara's was down near 16K.
Crandell
A tale of two tenders, of similar construction and almost identical loaded weight:
Older tenders had to take water at lower speed to prevent tender damage. When the PRR E6s powering the Lindbergh Special tried to take water too fast it blew the lid off the cistern - and ended up having to make an unplanned stop at a regular penstock.
Track pans required a dead level stretch of tangent track about 1/2 mile long, and enough traffic to justify them. West Texas is level, but the low humidity and comparatively light traffic would have resulted in losing far too much water to evaporation. OTOH, the track pans along the Hudson would probably have filled a train an hour or more. They weren't covered. Inside the tender there was some provision for clearing out larger trash at the scoop outlet, and almost certainly some kind of finer filter in each boiler feed line to keep small stuff out of the boiler. (Boilers were 'blown down' to get the really fine particulates out after they accumulated at the 'mud ring' at the bottom of the firebox.)
A train taking water at track speed would soak the first few cars and the right-of-way. Don't ask how I learned this.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with too little level track for track pans)
yes its true,used them a lot in the UK it was operated by a wheel in the cab .when the driver yelled you wound the scoop down and held on for grim death watched the water gauge and wound it back up when you had sufficient water.if you overfilled, it shot out of the tender water filler hole and shot all over the front coaches.used to make our day if we soaked any one.the water troughs were never covered and you picked no end of dead animals(ratsetc,) dead leaves and dirt. one big problem with them was if you were following another train that had picked up water. the troughs were slow in filling up so subsequently you hardly had any water to scoop up.