Nostalgia & History > WAG Wednesday: Santa Fe Water!

I was digging around Bill’s slides for some inspiration for this week’s WAG Wed. I found this little gem from Santa Fe steam history! An old steam tender has been converted to domestic water service. A very wise adage instructs us to ‘waste not’ so we will ‘want not’. It would seem Santa Fe took this to heart with this old steam tender. And it looks like a new coat of paint is just down the road…

1. AT&SF 189103 domestic water service car. Ex-tender from AT&SF 4103, in Topeka, KS on December 22, 1963.
(photo by William A. [Bill] Gibson Sr.)

Thanks for looking back!
Lance Garrels (santafe199)
Art Gibson (wag216)



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/27/22 01:46 by santafe199.

---

Wonder what that's off of? Maybe one of the 4000 class Mikes? Surprised the engine number doesn't show.

Frisco1522 Wrote: > Wonder what that's off of?

Ya know, by golly, I DID write a caption up there...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/14 09:24 by santafe199.

Pays to read the caption. :) After all, we are paying to the subscription. I saw where it came from in the beginning.

dcfbalcoS1 Wrote: > Pays to read the caption. :)

(chuckling) Yeah, but sometimes when you're just surfing along the captions don't get read. I did make a double-check, though. I surely make enough errors on my own (thank the stars for friendly correction ;^). So when I reassured myself I HAD written the caption I thought I'd poke a little fun Don's way.

Lance

Most of those tenders had a metal plate on the rear giving the engine number. However it might not be THAT number that the tender came from since tender swapping was in vogue on the Santa Fe when engines were retired and the tender was mated to another engine.

tomstp Wrote: > ...it might not be THAT number that the tender came from...

"THAT" NUMBER came directly from Bill's handwriting on his slide. In nearly 4 years of scanning his collection I've only found a couple legitimate errors in his record-keeping, both of them very minor.

Lance



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/26/14 13:56 by santafe199.

Definitely a unique application. Thanks, Lance.

Where would the water be delivered?

Well, I was there, too. When my dad wrote the number, I can assure you it was the 4103 (15000 gal coal burner). The 4101 class were all shopped <class 5 work> at Topeka, Ks. The 4103 and the 4114 received 20000 gal tenders when they were converted to oil. If you want more on this, buy the book "Iron Horses of the Santa Fe Trail".wag216
P.S. if you want, call Evan or Stan or Dr. McCall if you do not my info.

I like buried stand by steam line!

Near the bottom, this site has some very interesting Santa Fe tender history.
http://www.atsfrr.com/links/atsf/steam.htm

I am not saying that the number given was not on the tender. What I meant to have said is even though during the demise of steam and tender swapping the number plate on the back of the tender was not changed. It still carried the number of the engine for which it was built. But the tender might have been on a different numbered engine when finally retired. For example, the Santa Fe 4-6-2 in the park in Cleburne Tx has a tender with a engine number plate of a 4000 class 2-8-2. Hopoe that clears all that up.

To help a bit more, the AT&SF steam power tenders also had the Original number on the right side, in the middle on the frame. wag216