Several railroads favored the Vanderbuilt tender. What was the reason for it? Did the cylindrical shape make it more stable? I imagine the surging of the water inside wouldn’t be as bad as the rectangular tank of a regular tender. Does anyone out there know the benefits of the Vanderbuilt tender? Thanks in advance for any info.
This link should answer your question:
http://www.steamlocomotive.com/tenders
BTW, note that the name is spelled Vanderbilt, after the Commodore and Cornelius
Ironically the Vanderbilt Tender was never bought into by the NYC despite being invented by the grandson and namesake of the Commodore who built the NYC empire.
I have a related question.
My Q Class 2-8-2 B&O Mike has a Vandy. I have heard of auxiliary bottle tenders that carried nothing but water to supplement the Vandy tender. The B&O along the OML should have had a reasonable amount of water stops or water availible would they not?
Does any Beano Person understand why and where the railroad might have used a extra bottle tender behind a Q4 Mikado on the B&O?
If nothing else, how much work can you get out of a steam engine on a load of coal and water? I had once accessed a document going back to the pre world war one that provided some figures but none of the engines at the time had the tonnage ability or power available to the later steam.
The best information I have so far is down in Pine Bluff Arkansas for the Cotton Belt 4-8-4 L1 class which would be able to run 60 miles or so between drinks of water and oil around and a bit more than that on one fill of coal. However, it was a mainline engine made to haul rather than one that will work regionally or locally.
Good reasons for using auxiliary tenders:
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Water stops reduce the over-the-line speed of trains that don’t have sufficient tank capacity to bypass some of them.
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Places with useable water might be farther apart than the range of the locomotive when using only its ‘original equipment’ water capacity.*
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Water stations are expensive to maintain and add to the railroad’s taxable real estate base. When the N&W added auxiliary tenders to most of its line-haul locos it then closed a number of high cost/high tax water stops.
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Sometimes trains had to be stopped on upgrades to take water. If those stops could be eliminated the trains could actually take more tonnage over that route, even hauling the additional weight of the auxiliary tender. Steam locomotives could usually pull more tonnage than they could start, even under the best of conditions.
- A rather odd example of this was found with the Imperial Government Railways 4020 class 0-8-0T. When assigned to a branch line without locomotive-turning arrangements at the far end, it was discovered that the low-drivered Baldwin didn’t have enough side tank capacity to make a round trip without taking water enroute. Rather than put in an expensive water tank or use a different class of locomotive on that route, the master mechanic provided a little square tank on four wheels that could be coupled to either end of the locomotive, and hose connections on the locomotive so the injectors could take water from the ‘canteen.’
Chuck