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By railfancwb · Posted
New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad and probably others used the water troughs and scoops. Lionel included scoops on some tenders. This is one of the early post war locomotive and tender sets. -
By pipedreams · Posted
18 March 1945: The USAAF's Eighth and Fifteenth Air Forces put 1,250 heavy bombers over Berlin in one of the largest raids of the war. -
Given the choice between a half a BMW, a whole BMW or nothing, I choose nothing.
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By Schmidt Meister · Posted
There didn't seen to be a "proper" place for this so ... I had never heard of, or even imagined, the water trough method of high speed loading water for steam locomotives while moving along, no time wasted on slowing, stopping, loading, and slowly getting back up to speed. I don’t know if this method was ever employed in the U.S. to the degree it was in Britain. The information here was gathered from several British railway sites. I did find out that the ’troughs’ were used infrequently in the eastern U.S. and were referred to as water pans and the process was referred to as ‘jerking water.’ On routes used regularly for long-distance steam-hauled passenger and freight services (like the Settle-Carlisle Railway was), water troughs could be placed between the rails of each running line (see Image 6) and filled with water via a water tank (usually in the form of a tank house). These troughs allowed train crews to replenish the water supplies of their locomotives without having to stop the train. (It was referred to as the Ramsbottom System, after it’s inventor, John Ramsbottom … quite ironic, in my opinion.) As the locomotive reached the start of the water trough (usually indicated by a track side marker board), the fireman would lower a scoop into the trough. The forward movement of the train would force water up the scoop, through a pipe and into the locomotive's tender or water tank. The fireman needed to take great care to both lower and lift the scoop at precisely the right moment: • Lowering the scoop too early or lifting it too late could damage both the locomotive and between-rail structures such as boarded crossings. • Lowering the scoop too late or lifting it too early could leave the locomotive short of water, thereby forcing the crew to add an unscheduled stop for water further along the line. • Taking-up too much water would cause the excess to escape explosively from the lid(s) on top of the tanks, potentially damaging the lids and possibly causing injury. This method of taking-on water invariably created a lot of spray. If any windows were open in the train behind the locomotive, the passengers inside might get a bit damp, so train crews were required to warn passengers of this risk and to make sure that the windows in the leading carriages were closed when approaching a set of troughs. Since water is self leveling, water troughs can only be sited in locations where the railway track is 'level' (or in locations where the trackbed can be re-engineered to make it level). At Garsdale, the track formation is level for most of the length of the troughs. However, a short section of track at either end rises upwards at a gradient of 1 in 360. This seems to have been a deliberate arrangement, perhaps introduced to reduce the amount of water lost via the bow wave in front of the scoop. In areas subject to freezing, water troughs were heated by steam pipes that ran the full length of each trough (the steam being generated by a boiler located in the nearby tank house). John Ramsbottom (11 September 1814 – 20 May 1897) was an English mechanical engineer. Ramsbottom water troughs on a four-line stretch of the West Coast Main Line, England, in 1904. Diagram of LNWR tender apparatus from 1862. Trains taking on water from in track water troughs. -
Have you ever seen the uncut version of Hancock? Disclaimer: Conaints scenes.... Well, you know.
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