Water Tower Recommendation

Model Railroader Layouts and layout building
1

I am modeling the Northern Pacific late 1940’s - early 1950’s and would like a water tower recommendation. I am running a Spectrum 2-10-0 Decapod. I have attached a picture of my layout. I will use the water tower in the closest corner where I have the coal hopper.

Here’s the loco:

And here’s my “style”:

As you can tell, I’m a newbie, but certainly open to most structure modeling challenges.

Thanks

2

Walther’s makes some wooden water towers that would prbably fit the bill for you. You can check them out at this site: http://www.internettrains.com/ho-scale-walthers-walthers-cornerstone-structures-built-ups-ho-scale.html

Good Luck and welcome to Model RR!

3

[#ditto] One of the first kits I put together for my layout was the Walthers wood water tower - and it’s my wife’s favorite. (I’m NOT even allowed to weather it.)


(Click http://www.railimages.com/gallery/tomstage/adu for closeup.)

Walthers also makes a more modern metal one. I’m preferable to the wooden one myself. To make it look more realistic, I did substitute 37 link per inch chain in place of the thread “rope” that accompanied the kit. The chain makes it look much better.

American Model Builders also makes a very fine laser cut wooden water tower in a kit. Their web site is:

http://www.laserkit.com/laserkit.htm

Hope that’s a help.

Tom

4

This site has some nice stuff, including the old Cambell’s watertower;

http://www.hosteamcentral.com/index1.html

Here’s the tower;

Or you could just go to the middle of this page (buildings and structures) and start clicking the links. There’s lots of good ones there.

http://www.discounttrainsonline.com/ho-scale-model-trains.html

There are open bottom ones;

or;

or;

or twin water towers;

And closed bottom ones;

I don’t know what you’re after, but as you can see, there are lots of choices.

5

The best trick is to find a photo of a Northern Pacific engine facility, then model the ‘feel’ of what you see. It isn’t necessary to count rivets (or tank bands,) but NP was a Class 1 railroad and probably had a standard water tank that was used just about everywhere.

I’m sure that somebody who models NP can expand on this.

6

There ya go. Lots of choices, and don’t worry about being a ‘newbie’. Even John Allen was a newbie once upon a time…

7

Northern Pacific served an area that endured cold winters. Many of their water towers were totally enclosed, like the last two pictures in pcarrell’s post, to keep the water from freezing in the column.

Darrell, quiet…for now