The Jersey Central Camelback at the B&O Museum still has one.

Hello,

Despite reaching a somewhat refined solution, scooping water was always a violent affair at best.

Many years ago I recall some references I read on the New York Central’s quest to scoop water at high speed….i.e. 80 MPH. I often recall stories of the frozen hobos but other issues were starting to become a problem. I believe they initially started jacking up the scoop speed and found that air venting and overflow protection were big issues. The article posted earlier shows pictures of a torrent flowing over the sides of the cistern. At high speeds, this overflowing water was breaking windows in coaches of adjacent passing trains.

I believe the article I read was out of the old Train Shed Cyclopedia series.

The NYC did have an incident of a burst tender tank seam due to the air pressure surge during a high speed scoop. They air vented the tank and piped it to blast down to the ballast on the outside of the tender trucks. The NYC PT tenders had multiple vents along the length of the tender. The vents created another problem…..blasting away ballast from the overflow. This drove the need for the heavy tiles along the length of the pan. The NYC filmed much of this testing and I recall seeing photo of a guy with a movie camera set up on boards straddling the coal bunker shooting down at the tender hatch. At 80 MPH this would be a wild ride!

Despite the challenges, the NYC made it workable and this capability along with many other contributors made the NYC’s New York to Chicago travel times the shortest…times which may still stand to this day. (Someone correct me if I am wrong.) I believe the got the trip down to 15 to 15-1/2 hours? It also helped the Niagara reach monthly mileage which may have been a record……25,000 miles per month….if my memory serves me right.

The previous article also mentions a wreck on the NYC in the 40’s that was related to water scooping. In one of my NYC books, they described this incident. One train was scooping water and the scoop did not raise after the pan and was dragging for quite a while. It was tearing up ties along the way and I believe it caught something…a switch? And derailed the train. A second train, that could not get stopped, I believe with a Niagara on the point, slammed into the wreck.

You had to wonder on the NYC and the PRR when they had pans in high elevation or northern locations in the dead of winter when the train was soaked out at 0 -10 degrees F, even with hot water in the pans, the ice build-up had to be problematic. How did the scoop mechanism keep from freezing itself…..or ice build up on the wheels….brake shoes, etc.?........What a mess!

Regardless….it was an extremely fascinating part of the steam era. When I talk about this subject to people who know little about steam, they are surprised this technology existed.
If a heritage line could recreate this, I think it would really get the public’s attention. It is very unique.

Regards,

Randy Musselman

Reading RR had some at Roelofs, Pa., on the divide between Neshaminy Creek and Delaware River valleys, on the Route of the Royal Blue. CNJ and B&O also used it. P-RSL had some at Ancora, N.J. PRR and Reading used it.

Did the B&O have track pans of their own, or just use the CNJ ones, and if so where? Having been qualified on the Philly sub I can tell you there aren't many level stretches of track long enough for a track pan. The saying among the old-heads on the East End is, "two miles uphill, two miles downhill" (pretty much for the entire sub, constantly changing from power to dynamic). The two longest stretches of level (or near level) track on the entire sub are the Susquehanna River bridge (about 6,700'), and about a mile around the Eder Detector (MP BA46.3), and I'm not sure if that mile is totally level.