So our area has seen a couple of wrecks over the years. Recently the local historical society came across the air reservoir below and are looking for any information about it, particularly concerning the date. If they can link it to one of the wrecks it'll be another piece of information used in telling those stories. It might be nothing but junk though too. I'm not familiar with these giving way like it shows in the picture but I could be wrong and that's why I'm here asking. Is this something they should preserve as local history?

Thanks in advance for any and all replies.

A couple more pictures that wouldn't fit in the first post.

It doesn't look very old and with the amount of black paint still on it's probably not any older than the 1980's. It looks like scrap yard material to me or i guess you could plant flowers in it or use it as a big conversation pc. I would say it got damaged and busted up when the RR car it was on derailed and was not the cause of a derailment itself. I don't know what the X-X logo on it stands for but it must be common as i've seen it on alot of cars at NS and i even have the same air res. tank's with the same but smaller logo on my caboose and box car i have from the 40's.

At Chatfield, Ohio a few years back we had a couple tank cars derail in a train and one of them lost it's air res. tank and piping wich got tore off and they are still laying in the ditch!

That's the WABCO logo. As stated, it looks like the victim rather than the cause of the wreck. But if it costs you nothing to preserve it, I suppose it's worth it.

It could be the centerpiece for a display interpreting the wreck history of that section.

dave

It's called a combined, divided emergency and auxiliary reservoir, IIRC. One side is the emergency reservoir, the other is the service reservoir. One side has that moon-shaped casting in it to reduce the cubic volume of that side.

There about a bazillion of those reservoirs out there in service. They are cast steel, however, these are slowly going away as new reservoirs fabricated of welded steel are the way to go now. For one thing, they don't shatter like these (rarely) do.

It would make a nice part of a cut-away exhibit on air brakes, or as a teaching tool for carmen and train crew, but that's about all.

IMO, of course

Thanks guys. Any chance there's a way to date it? When did they switch over to this type of device?

This is what I posted on their Facebook page a little bit ago: "It's called a "two compartment reservoir", part of the AB system of air brakes on a freight car. One side, I think the side that is opened, is auxiliary reservoir and the other side is the emergency reservoir. If the mounting tabs are still on it they should be labeled as AUX and EMER. The funky symbol is apparently a symbol for the WABCO (Westinghouse Air Brake Company) which spun off the railroad division to a company called Wabtec. You can see the new version of the item here: http://www.wabtec.com/main/product.asp?product_id=53.

There are 2 ways to tell which end is which:

1. The reservoir assembly has 2 mounting lugs on the auxiliary end, and 1 lug on the emergency end.

2. It will also be cast into the tab on the plate that divides the two sections. See that in the first photo. One side will say something like "Emerg" and the other will say something like "aux".

This is a very interesting topic for me. I've been posed with the exact same scenario lately. I have 2 seemingly typical approx. 15 gallon industrial air tanks that I recently ran across when I was doing some spring cleaning in my shop building. However, I obtained them from an older gentleman who claims he took them off the N&W Class A locomotives that were in stationary boiler service at Union Carbide. Are they worth preserving? Or do they just need to go into my scrap pile?

The facts:
1. The older gentleman did work at Union Carbide in a capacity that he would easily get permission to take home "scrap" metal
2. He was a railfan and all around eccentric tinkerer
3. He used the tanks for his homemade air compressor in his basement shop
4. My family and I knew him very well for 30+ years before he passed away and I never knew him to tell outlandish stories or stretched truths
5. The tanks have zero markings on them
6. I've never seen similar tanks on the 1218

What do you guys think?

The second photo is a nice example of the Westinghouse Airbrake Manufacturing logo. It's a little easier to see the three letters if rotated 90 degrees clockwise (see below).

On a lot of smaller air brake parts the crossbar of the A is not visible, so it looks like XX.

As far as dating the cast iron reservoir goes, WABCO started making those about 1936 and they are still in production. If it is really important to you, there are rubber gaskets where the halves bolt together. These gaskets will have a date, probably just a two digit year and a number for the quarter. If you can connect this broken reservoir to a famous person or an important event, it might be worth saving, otherwise it is just scrap.

"bah, those steam engines are just old junk, there are TONS of them ...they're coming out with bigger, better modern diesels now, soon we won't need these dime a dozen money pits, we'll be turning big profits..."


It's all about your choice and mission. If it were not for those who had the foresight to preserve steam, we'd have nothing left of it, who's to say these millions of cast reservoirs will be around for ever?

Everything tells a story, your choice as to how much of the story you want to preserve.