Sketcher.

Southern Cross, Volume 9, Issue 3, 20 April 1901, Page 11

Sketcher.

HOW RAILWAY EXPRESSES PICK UP WATER.

The performance of long railroad runs is verj much simplified by the ingenious device for replenishing the tenders, by means of water-troughs laid in the centre of the track, while the train is speeding over the metals. These troughs must be familiar to many of our readers, says ‘ The New Penny Magazine,’ especially those who travel on the North-Western main line, with which company the idea originated just 40 years ago. The credit of the invention really belongs to a Mr Ramsbottom, who, as ‘ superintendent of the line ’ to the Euston Square Company, devised and took out a patent for the same in 1860. The apparatus may be briefly described as follows :An iron trough, some 400 yards in length, is laid in the ‘ four-feet way ’ on a stretch of straight, level line in the neighbourhood of a spring of good soft water. The tender of the locomotive is fitted with a scoop, which can be lowered into the trough, and the force of resistance throws the water it contains up through the scoop into the tank of the tender. At the points where the trough begins and terminates the track is slightly raised, as by this means the water cannot run out, and the scoop, if the stoker forgets to lift it, is automatically pushed up and closed. The great length of the trough allows of enough water being kept ready to fill innumerable tenders, and as fast as it is drained off by thirsty engines the trough automatically fills up again from the reservoirs by the side of the line. Sometimes it happens that, through an error of judgment, the scoop is kept lowered after the tender has been filled, the result being that the overflow boils up like a fountain, and if not checked in time will flood the tender, burst over the footplate, and even extinguish the fire.