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On the locomotives that had “Vanderbuilt” Tenders attached to them, could those locos be both fed by coal and oil ? or was it for the useability factor of being able to swap the tender between oil burning locos and coal burning locos.???
Just asking…
Johnboy out…
Gidday Johnboy, Short answer, no.
This site may give you more insight…
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/tenders/
Cheers, the Bear.[:)]
A steam loco tender carried fuel and water. The Vanderbilt design took advantage of the inherent strength of a cylinder to carry the water, which was always at the rear of the tender. The front of a Vanderbilt tender usually had a squarish fuel section at the front, whence the fuel could easily be delivered to the firebox. The locomotive might burn coal or wood, in which case the firebox was equipped with grates and ashpans appropriate to solid fuels. If the locomotive burned oil or some other liquid fuel, it had atomizers and other features that allowed it to burn those fuels.
Vanderbilt tenders were designed to carry whatever fuel the locomotive required. Coal tenders ordinarily had a stoker screw that fed coal forward to the locomotive. Oil tenders had a fuel bunker that allowed the fuel to be piped forward to the engine. Some railroads modified their engines to change from one fuel to another. In that case, the tender had to be replaced or modified to suit.
A Vanderbilt tender was not necessarily assigned to carry one fuel or the other. Some carried coal; some carried oil; and some probably carried other fuels in other parts of the world.
Interestingly, the Vanderbilt tender was invented by a nephew of Commodore Vanderbilt; but was not adopted by the Commodore’s New York Central Railroad.
Tom
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Thanks Tom and Bear,
Very Informative for me as I wasn’t thinking water in the back section. It is very logical now.
Johnboy out…and wondering how I missed that. Duh…
A steam engine doesn’t perform too well without water. A few years ago I took a 10-year old kid for a ride on the (now closed) East Broad Top Railroad. We rode in an open car right behind Mikado 15. It was a clear, sunny day, but he thought it was starting to rain when he felt a fine mist coming out of the sky. Actually, it was water condensing out of the engine’s steam plume, which trailed above us.
People sometimes call the tender a “coal car”, but that’s only half the story![:)]
Tom
Yes, most Vanderbilt tenders carried coal for fuel but some were oil. Off the top of my head, I think there were two or three roads that had both oil and coal Vanderbilt tenders. Oil was more common with western railroads, but there were a few eastern roads that had at least a few oil burning steam engines on the roster for special reasons. For example, the NYC had some steam locos in the 1940s that ran in upstate New York that burned oil because of the fire hazard in the summer with a high concentration of evergreen trees. (These locos did not sport Vanderbilt tenders, however.) I would suspect that most tenders that carried oil were not Vanderbilts.
Why can’t a steam locmotive sit down? Because it has a tender behind! [:P]
Victor A. Baird
Here’s an oil-burner with a Vanderbilt:
Wayne
I was aware that NYC’s Vanderbilt was responsible for the Vanderbilt tender, but were they not used on his own railroad, NYC? HZ
[quote user=“ACY”
Interestingly, the Vanderbilt tender was invented by a nephew of Commodore Vanderbilt; but was not adopted by the Commodore’s New York Central Railroad.
Tom
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Hi Howard,
This is what Tom “ACY” said about that.
Johnboy out…
I don’t know the inventor’s relationship with his uncle’s railroad, but it evidently didn’t include use of his tender design.
I’m always willing to learn something new, but I can’t think of a single NYC steam loco that used a Vanderbilt tender. If it happened at all, I suspect the loco was acquired via some absorbed line. NYC Motive Power people certainly had occasion to see Vanderbilt tenders in use on neighboring NH, Erie, B&O, C&O, and probably others, so they couldn’t have been ignorant of the design. PRR is another road that avoided Vanderbilts. I guess that’s one of the few instances of a mutually agreed truce in the great NYC-PRR rivalry.
Tom
Coversion was as simple as dropping an oil tank and heater into the vacated coal bunker and the application of suitable piping to deliver oil to a burner and the inclusion of control valves in the cab, not all conversations were sucessfull due to firebox or burner design.
Dave
Dave
Conversion of an oil tender to coal would be much more problematic if the engine is stoker-equipped. Installation of the stoker screw would be a real bear if the tender wasn’t originally designed for it. In fact, I would suggest that it might never have been done. I know: it’s pretty risky to ever say “never”.
Tom
ACY
SP maintained a modest fleet of coal burning F class 2-10-2’s for service between El Paso and Tumacarri, these vanderbuilt tenders retained their stokers as they cycled between coal and oil for fuel as they were rotated to and from the Pacific Lines until the practice of coal burning was discontinued system wide in 1948.
Dave