1.Would RRs have coal and water towers in remote areas they passed through or would they always be in depot stops ?
- Would there ever be freight depots without adjoining passenger depots ?
yes and yes
quite often, especially in the early days of railroading, water had to be gotten where the water was available, not necessarily where there were towns. sometimes villages, rudely called “Tank Towns,” grew up around isolated water stops.
Freight stations were generally located near the local passenger facilities, but not always. quite often when/where rail lines were elevated to eliminate grade crossings, the old freight houses continued in service.
On the Southern Pacific, Modoc Cutoff was an interesting operation. There was a water tower and several residences and no good water at a place called Hackamore, CA. About twenty miles down the 2.2% grade was a place with good water called Canby. The local would couple up to tank cars, three of so, left at Canby during the night and fill them and their locomotive. Then continue up to Hackamore, spotting them at the water tower for locomotives and residence use.
Have fun, Rob
So that is where the term Tank Town came from
Very interesting
I’m just finishing reading a book on NP’s pioneer steam engines. A steam engine needed to stop for water much more often than it had to stop for fuel, so in the 19th century, as the NP built their mainline to the west, they normally had coaling (or in the earliest days, firewood) facilities every 50-60 miles, but had water tanks every 10-15 miles. Many of these water tanks were in remote areas in Dakota Territory or Montana where there were no towns. Often the water tanks would have a siding, so it was easy to add say a grain elevator there as people moved into the area and started farming. If you have one business, it easy to add another, then you have enough people to warrant a small passenger depot. Before you know it, you’ve got a town!!
Smaller towns sometimes had combined depots which handled passengers and freight - usually express parcels. As a town got bigger, it might warrant a freight depot if there was enough freight coming in for businesses located on the tracks. In the early days, businesses were generally close enough to the mainline to be served directly, or to use a team track.
Two answers:
- Driving along the old Santa Fe route through southern Colorado, there is a string of ghost towns at regular intervals. Apparently, they were originally water stops - and dried up and blew away when the Santa Fe stopped using water.
- Along the far reaches of the C&NW in western South Dakota there were isolated grain elevators and cattle pens in places where the (out of service) passenger facility consisted of an open-sided shed similar to a bus shelter. Frequently there were small frame buildings where boxcar-type lading could be stored associated with such isolated elevators.
Both were observed when I was living in the area in the 1980s.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
Those ghost towns were not necessarily water stops although that would be a common label. In olden times the track maintenance forces had fairly short sections of track to maintain, something like 7 miles being quite typical. Without motorized equipment they had to live close to their section. There would also be some form of station building to house a telegraph operator or agent to issue train orders if required to passing trains, and track line-ups to the track forces. The station might be open 24 hours or just on day shift.
Water tanks were not needed at such close intervals. If a station had no source of decent water locally, enough for domestic use would be delivered periodically by rail, in a tank car or home-made variant. Depending on grades and traffic levels, spacing of water tanks for trains was often something like every 20 miles. If possible they would be located at a station, easy to have someone on hand to look after its maintenance and operation, but of course exceptions did occur. Sometimes they could be fed by gravity from an uphill source but often pumps would be required.
Coal chutes, as already
The N&W had a big concrete coaling tower at Vickers, Virginia (still standing into the 1980’s and may still be there). This is relatively close to Radford, VA and about 45 miles west of Roanoke. There is not a great deal else there, although there used to be some section houses as well. The railroads had to put the supplies for the locomotives where it was needed (where the limits of the tender dictated). While that may have later developed into a community due to the RR activity/employment, that is not always the case.
An example of the town following the RR development is the legend behind the development of Clover, South Carolina. The RR built a water tank there and the leaking water fostered a nice growth of clover on the ground, so the subsequent town that developed there was named Clover after the RR employee’s nickname for the place. This connects to what would be called a “jerkwater town”, where the train would stop to jerk (acquire; pull down the penstock) water.
As to the freight houses; I can think of examples where the two were not particularly close to one another. The passenger station may be closer to downtown on the high-dollar real estate, while the freight house may be more at the edge of town close to a roadway. I’ll have to think some more about examples on that one.
Bill
I’ll go with that reasoning and just have the freight station and compressing my farm I’ll have room for the coal and water towers in the same vicinity
Sounds good -passenger service in town and freight and service at the edge of town
One good thing about this thread I learned the origin of the terms Tank Town and Jerk Water r Town
I was doing some research a while ago, the connection of “jerk water” with railroads seems to have originated on the Boston & Worcester Railroad in the mid 1830s. When the line first reached Framingham there were no water tanks, so for several months the crew and male passengers were obliged to “jerk water” out of a nearby creek with pails.
On my layout I have several water tanks spotted on sidings where trains could take on water and not foul the mainline for other trains. I have a timetable made up so that a train stopping to take water has to wait until it gets a green line from the signals to leave the siding. Sometimes a local freight pulls in and takes water while an express races by that was following the freight. As for freight houses you can put them almost anywhere and it will work.
Ray
Being a 3rd tier ( Maybe even 4th ) RR the ME&O didn’t run enough trains to have to worry about fouling the mainline so the coaling tower and water tank will be on the main right down from the freight house and close to a farm
The only question I have with that scenario is “Where does the Express take water?” Apart from terminal points, it was more common to have the water tank on the main line so the Express could just pause to fill up and depart. Where a train stopped to take on more water was a judgement call on the part of the engineer. There would be a normal pattern but this could vary at short notice on any given day.
Using the siding would delay it significantly longer, not to mention the difficulty when an opposing train was already in the siding waiting for the Express to go by. In the days before CTC and radio trains ran strictly by timetable and superiority rules, and the inferior train had to use the siding unless the dispatcher had earlier issued a specific train order to both trains. The dispatcher would probably be the last to know about the need for a water stop so he couldn’t issue the train orders in advance anyway. Even with CTC, radio was quite uncommon in the steam era and may not have linked to the dispatcher…
Sometimes the water tower would be in the yard or siding, but often there would be a standpipe beside the main track.
John
Later on in time express trains took water on with a scoop. Water would sit in a pool between the rails that the train drove through at speed. A scoop would be lowered on the tender to pick the water up.
Here’s a pic of an old steamer running through with the scoop down.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Empire_State_Express_1905.jpg
Here’s an other article on the use of the water scoop also called the Water Jerk. There are pictures included on several pages.
Thanks for the link
It always amazed me that such a system worked without derailing the train
There’s not as much force as it looks compared to the tender weight. The water scoop was only about 7 inches deep and 4 or so inches wide.
Water troughs for picking up water on the fly did exist, but their use was not widespread. One challenge was finding a length of track that was completely level for sufficient distance. Even what appears level to the eye usually turns out to have a slight slope when survey instruments are used. Also in the more northern part of our continent there are freezing temperatures to contend with from time to time. That could be solved but was more trouble than it was worth to most roads.
John
Remember too that the distances between water tanks were set at a time when engines - and tenders - were quite small. By the 1920’s a mainline passenger engine’s tender would hold maybe 2 or 3 times the amount of water of a typical 1880’s 4-4-0. Therefore limited stop trains wouldn’t have to stop at every station / water tank for water.
It wasn’t uncommon in the 1880’s for engines in the west to have siphon hoses so they could take water from lakes or streams, in new areas where tanks hadn’t been built yet. That was common on logging engines into the 20th century. However, in some parts of the west, water had alkali or was otherwise “hard” and presented problems using. Railroads sometimes had to bring tankcars of water in to fill a tank with softer water.
Smaller communities frequently had combination depots such as pictured below. The bigger the community, however, the more likely the freight and passenger depots were separate facilities. A frequent SP practice for its combination stations was to place a double-ended house track (serving the freight portion of the depot) between the main track and depot. If there was a passing siding, it would be placed on the side opposite the depot. The photo shows the end of a box car on the house track at the freight platform.
(Does your depot include a dog in the scene?)