Nostalgia & History > John Bromley's Comment in The Big Boy Cab Ride Post

Got me to thinking about the need for water to make the steam. I know that NYC used in track water pans to allow their tenders to scoop up water on the move. Naturally this could only work where the track was essentially dead level (the Water Level Route). How many other roads used this method of refilling tenders and how efficient was it?

It was a British invention, from around 1860.

The first in the USA was on the New York Central and Hudson at Montrose NY, along the Hudson River,
installed in 1870. The Pennsylvania Railroad was next...embarrassed at being in second place,
they installed TWO pans at the same location, Sang Hollow PA.

Other roads known to have used them: Baltimore and Ohio, Central of New Jersey, Reading, Maine Central,
New Haven and Milwaukee Road.

Loss of water by splashing was a cause of costly waste. Most of it didn't enter the tender, but was lost
on the roadbed. Some went into open coach windows, to the dismay of passengers.

Adding to the cost: in winter, steam boilers were required to heat the water and the pans to prevent freezing.

Track pans were never popular in much of the West. In many areas a hot, dry climate would have caused
rapid evaporation of the water. In these same areas, water was expensive to bring in by tank car.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/13/12 22:04 by GenePoon.

That is where the term "Jerk Water Town" originated.

I understood "jerk water" to be a place where water was not normally needed, or not supplied by a tank. It then became necessary to jerk water from an available stream, pond, etc, by use of pump or syphon, etc.

Plenty of "jerk water" towns. Some don't even have a railroad.

GenePoon Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> Loss of water by splashing was another cause of
> costly waste. Most of it didn't enter the tender,
> but was lost
> on the roadbed. Some went into open coach
> windows, to the dismay of passengers.

I remember a Rock island conductor I worked with telling me about the NYC crack passenger trains arriving at LaSalle Street Station. Some still had head end equipment with truss rods, and in the winter the Station would have an ambulance on standby for their arrival as they would have a "free" rider coming in under the head end equipment and they would be frozen to the rods, thanks to the water pans across their system.

Bob Krieger
Cheyenne, WY

Wow, what a rude surprise.

Many on-line dictionaries agree it was originally a RR term, but referred to using a bucket to "jerk water" to fill a tender, not a pump. Later is was used to refer to small unimportant towns and such.

In the late 1970s at USRA I worked for a crusty, craggy-faced, gravelly voiced ex-PRR man who started on the railroad as a track supervisor in the late 1930s. I asked him about track pans. His response (expurgated as necessary):

"Those G** D**ned track pans! Je**S Ch***t! If the track wasn't leveled very carefull, all the water would spill out one side or the other. Firemen would lower the scoop too early, or pick it up too late, and bust the ends out of the pans. If somebody forgot to open the manhole on the tender, the d**ned thing would blow right off. I hated those pans."

Scooping Water in the Age of Steam by James Alexander Jr. explains quite a bit about track water pans. It was an article in Trains Magazine in May 1993. It is now in a Pdf http://www.jimquest.com/writ/trains/pans/Track_Pans.pdf

I think PRSL had one on the Atlantic City line. Probably installed by PRR engineering staff. It was an ideal installation - flat geography and tons of high speed passenger trains. Summer weekends it almost ran like a subway system.
Clarence