In order to generate the steam to power steam locomotives, it took two basic things: water and the fuel to bring the water to a boil. The fuel was usually wood, coal or fuel oil, but steam engines could run on anything that would burn. How often the locomotive had to stop for water depended on the size of the boiler, the capacity of the tender, and to a certain degree, on how hard the locomotive was working. But stopping was a necessity. If a locomotive ran out of water, a dangerous and often deadly boiler explosion was the result. There are a lot of variables, but I have read that water towers needed to be located no more than 50 miles apart. On today’s Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad, the distance between Durango and Silverton is 48 miles, and a locomotive with a full tender of water leaving Durango for a round trip to Silverton will have to refill with water at least once along the way. My towns of Durango and Silverton will each have water tanks (I don’t believe that modern Silverton does), but I thought that for operational interest I needed at least one tank in between.
I studied my track plan to find somewhere about half way between Durango and Silverton where I could locate a main line water tank. The place I chose was in the far southwest corner of the layout room, just before the trains would reach the mining area above Silverton. The letter “W” in the blue square is my symbol for water tanks. Stopping on the main line for water was not uncommon.
There were probably as many ways to build a water tank as there were railroads, but I decided to try a flat-topped tank for my first venture into scratch-building one. The flat top is easier to build than a cone shaped one, or a segmented cone. There were plans for this famous Baker Tank at Summit, Colorado, in the 2007 On30 Annual, so I went there for starters.
The Baker Tank has been preserved, as this up to date photo shows. I also liked the simplicity of the support structure under this tank.
I decided that as long as I was going to build one of these, I might as well build three….one for my layout, and two to sell on eBay. It doesn’t take that much longer to build three of something at one time than it does to build one, and the eBay sale will more than cover the cost of the whole project. So, a few scale sketches on some quarter-inch graph paper, and I’m ready to go. For the water container, I used the heavy cardboard tube from a roll of bubble wrap, and cut it into three equal sections. The wood for the support frames is quarter inch (scale 12″x12″) basswood. I have already departed a little from the Baker tank supports, but that’s OK; I’m not building the Baker tank; I’m building MY tank.
I’ll support the tank on three leg assemblies. There will be lateral cross-bracing, and eventually steel rods running between the leg assemblies.
This photo shows some of the leg assemblies with the cross bracing. The tanks are upside down, and I’ve used 1/16th inch scribed basswood siding for the bottoms. The scribes are 1/4 inch apart, so they represent boards that are a scale 3″ x 12″. Before staining, I took my knife and deepened the scribes, so that the stain would accent the individual boards better.
I made the tops out of the same scribed siding, and added two perpendicular battens and a hatch. The hatch will eventually have Grandt Line hinges, but will not actually open.
Turning the tanks upside down again, I began installing some scale 6″ x 12″ supports under the 3″ x 12″ bottom boards.
This photo shows several steps in the assembly process. All three tanks have all of the 6 x 12 bottom supports in place. The center and right tanks have the hexagonal 6 x 12 frame added, and the left and right tanks have begun to be sheathed in 3 x 12 vertical boards. I keep them parallel to the tank sides by using a plastic drawing square as I glue them in place. The rubber bands hold the tops and bottoms of the boards tightly to the cardboard cylinders while the glue sets. I find that if I am very careful with my Aleene’s Tacky Glue, and don’t get any on the visible surface of the wood, I can stain the project as I go along; I don’t have to stain the wood before I glue it together.
And, here is a sample tank to this point.
In an earlier post, I talked about the staining method like to use. It involves mixing just a few drops of leather dye (from Tandy’s Leather Store), with 70% isopropyl alcohol from Walgreen’s. I mix several different stain colors, and keep them in plastic containers with snap-on lids. I bought three different colors of dye about a year ago….mahogany, tan and USMC black. They should last me for all the years I plan to be building the railroad, and the alcohol is cheap. You can see the nice water-stained effect I can get on the side of the tank by layering and dripping on multiple coats of the diluted stain. The alcohol dries quickly, and can even be accelerated with a small hair dryer.
Not all water tanks had them, but tanks that were in areas where freezing could occur did, and they were called “frost boxes”, because they surrounded the pipes leading into the tank from the ground, and helped to keep them from freezing. I used some HO scale ship-lap siding for the walls, 3/32″ angle on the corners, a Grandt Line baggage car door (with the window area boarded over), and the head of a straight pin for the door handle.
I made the frost boxes so that they could be located in one of four places. For the tanks I am selling, I will not glue them in, so the buyers can customize their location. You can see here that they can go in front of, or behind the center support legs, and with the door facing to the left or to the right.
Here’s a little high tech twist! I burned all of my research photos to a disk, and displayed them on my lap top at the side of my working desk. That makes it easy to look up any specific detail that I want to model.
I’m using the metal castings made by Milepost Model Works and Grandt Line Products for the spout and feed pipe. I was really pleased with the way these castings took a coat of Micro-Engineering rail weathering solution. They turned black instantly, and as they dried, the oxidized metal took on a whitish water stained look.
I needed to make some modifications to my under framing to get the feed water pipe to fit correctly.
Here is the water spout, and the half-ounce lead piece I will use to counterweight it. All of that detailing on the spout happened automatically with one quick splash of ME’s track weathering solution.
Water tank spout counterweights were sometimes exposed, and sometimes enclosed. Since I’m thinking about animating my tank, I’m going to cheat a little on the rigging, and run the counterweight inside the tank. If I model the enclosed counterweight system, no one will be able to tell where my counterweights actually go. After I made this drawing, I decided to eliminate the pulleys, and run the chain directly over the steel rod, so there would be less friction or chance of snagging. I also decided not to use the 1/8 inch set outs, but mount the counterweight boxes directly to the tank side.
This photo shows the chain attached to the spout, and running over the steel pin at the top (an On30 wheel-set axle with the wheels slid off). Water spouts were prototypically NOT hinged on the bottom end, but hung loosely, so there was a some left to right play in them. This gave the engineer a small range of positions for locating the tender hatch, and allowed the fireman to make the final alignment before releasing the water into the tender. I did take one small liberty here, so that the water spout/chain connection could better take the wear and tear of going up and down. I drilled holes through the spout for both the long and short chains. Since I’m not going to actually flow water through it, I don’t have to worry about leaks :-).
Here you can see both chains. Neither one of them is actually glued to the spout, and when the spout is lowered, the back end of it lines up with the feed water pipe, as it would on the real thing. The long chain passes over the steel rod, through two hidden holes in the upper tank side, and connects to the lead counterweight inside. The shorter lower chain is only glued to the counterweight box as shown.
This photo shows the longer chain going over the steel rod, and through the holes into the tank. The chain is from Comstock Carshops.
Inside the tank, I mounted a short piece of styrene rod to reduce the friction of the chain passing through the cardboard tube. This makes the whole up and down mechanism work pretty smoothly. I’m going to try attaching the counterweight to a Switchmaster switch motor, which will fit inside the tank.
Progress photo.
Most water tanks had a tall ladder that allowed workers to get up to the hatch on top for routine maintenance and trouble-shooting. I’m making mine by connecting two strips of scale 3 x 3, notching out the top strip, and using scale 3 x 3 ladder rungs. Here I have the trusty old 3M blue painter’s tape in place, sticky side up, to hold the ladder stringers, while I glue in the rungs.
I like to use bamboo shish-ka-bob sticks to apply glue in tight places. A life-time supply is available at the grocery store for a pittance, and they also work for uncoupling rolling stock during operating sessions. Some modelers use toothpicks for glue application, but I like the heft, the reach, the balance, and the hardness of the bamboo pieces.
Wooden water tanks needed reinforcing bands around them to keep the water from bursting through the sides. I’m going to use thin styrene strips to simulate these. I think these might be available in black styrene, but the store I went to only had the white ones, so I will paint them with Polly Scale Grimy Black. The ladder is another element I’m going to leave unattached for whoever buys these tanks to position as they like.
Because the water at the bottom of the tank exerts more pressure on the sides than the water at the top, you will see that the spacing of the bands on wooden water tanks was not regular, but graduated from top to bottom. I made a scale on the white card to the left, and piled up varying heights of things to support my pencil. Turning the tank while holding the pencil in place creates a nice level line.
This photo shows the graduated banding, and the addition of the water level gauge. I’m going to use Grandt Line castings to simulate the hardware that was use to adjust the tightness on the tank bands. I glued this gauge to my tank, but on the ones I sell, I’ll leave it unglued so the buyers can place it in the position of their choice. I am assuming that the gauge would face the direction of most approaching trains.
A water level gauge was a simple but effective way of showing how much water was left in the tank. On the outside of the tank, a small weight was attached to a chain, which ran over a pulley, into the tank, and attached to a float on the other end. As the water level fell in the tank, the marker weight outside rose up the scale to the smaller numbers, and vice versa. I made the small pulley here from an N scale wheel-set, by cutting the axle at it’s midpoint, snipping off the axle points, and gluing the two wheels face to face.
This picture shows the water level gauge chain running into the tank.
Almost finished! I have to add the band tighteners, the steel rods connecting the leg assemblies (and their accompanying NBW castings), the rope used to pull the spout down to the tender hatch, and the rope used to release the water into the spout. Then I’ll do some weathering with Bragdon weathering powders, and see how it looks.
Here you can see the band tighteners along the left hand side of the tank. These are from Grandt Line Products. Technically they aren’t the correct ones for the flat metal bands. These represent the ones used on cable type bands, but from a distance, I think they’ll pass.
Here is another view of the band tighteners. There is a reason that they were applied in a sloped order, but I can’t remember it right now. It had something to do with distributing pressures.
In this photo you can see the chain with a little handle that was used by the fireman to pull the spout down to the tender hatch.
These are the Grandt Line castings for the hinges on the upper hatch. They are about 3/16ths of an inch long.
Here you can see the steel rods that reinforce the leg assemblies. The NBW castings represent the nuts and washers that were attached to the threaded end of the rods.
The Shay locomotive was a geared engine that did not have a tender. The water tank and coal bin were a part of the rear of the engine.
A new photo backdrop from RealisticBackgrounds.com, and a section of ME Code 83 track that I painted with a set of Floquil’s track painting pens.
I guess I need a fireman up there to control the spout.
There is one more detail that I will probably still add, and that is the chain that came down from the top of the tank that the fireman pulled on to release the flow of water to the spout.
In this drawing of the water tank at Chama, New Mexico, which serviced two parallel tracks, you can see the release valve cord. It’s the one with the large loop in it.
Other railroads used other methods for opening the tank valve. Here it was the protruding rod above the spout, that worked on a fulcrum (like a teeter-totter). See the drawing below.
This cut-away drawing explains the mechanics of it.
I know its been a long while since you’ve written this but I want one! Would you be willing to build some (or one) to sell for a premium? Or does any one know where I can get something similar? I’ve tried building one myself and searched for custom towers for days for sale with no luck! bmb0327@gmail.com
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Where did you get the water spouts from???
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This is very cool. I build custom birdhouses and I wanted to make one as a water tank. This answered quite a few questions for me. Thanks.
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