Water cranes

Not strictly steam locos, but steam loco related.
In the days of steam all major stations had a water crane at the platform end. Pete Smith wrote in one of his books that the crane at Southampton Central delivered water at the rate of 1,000 gallons per minute and could replenish a Merchant Navy in three minutes.
Did many major stations have water supplies at such a rate or was Soton in a small select group with super pumps?

 

Don't know if that flow rate is unusually high but a pump would not be needed if the water crane was fed from a water tower.

 

Not generally pumped, indeed I don't know of one myself. Most if not all water cranes in this country are/were fed by gravity from a water tank sized to hold enough water to meet the demand. These would be filled by a pump or the mains or fed from a local stream source. The rate of flow would be controlled by the gravitational head, the size of pipe and the amount the wheel valve would be opened.
Most water cranes would have been of a standard size according to the railway company's design but tanks would only be sized according to local demand plus a bit for emergencies.

Merchant Navy's, as far as I remember, required a 'swan neck' pipe to enable the crane to reach up to the high tender filler.

 

The flow rate basically depends on the head (i.e. how high the water tower is above the height of the crane); the internal resistance in the pipework (which depends on its diameter, length and the number of bends); and finally whether you can control the bag in the tank (which is helped if the driver lines up well, and the bag can drop straight in rather than go at an angle). I doubt Southampton was much different in that regard than any other major station. In days of steam, using gravity feed would be much more reliable than a pump that had to be turned on and off as each engine came in.

Where you need a powerful pump is to keep the water tank full. Keeping a tank at a station like Southampton full, when every few minutes a pacific or big 4-6-0 gets a full tank is rather different from a country station that might have to supply 1000gals to a tank engine every hour or so. A big station would be using tens of thousands of gallons per hour, meaning fairly major pumping infrastructure to keep the water tower topped up. But that infrastructure could be kept running non-stop (rather than intermittently) and would probably have dedicated people to keep it running reliably.

On a related note: I once heard that the relative position of water cranes and tank fillers on LBSCR tank engines was designed such that, on any class of engine, if the driver lined the buffers up with the end of the platform, the crane would be in the right place for the tank fillers - which is why, relatively speaking, they are further back on a Terrier than on, for example, an E4. Anyone know if that is true, or urban myth?

Tom

 

"On a related note: I once heard that the relative position of water cranes and tank fillers on LBSCR tank engines was designed such that, on any class of engine, if the driver lined the buffers up with the end of the platform, the crane would be in the right place for the tank fillers".
If for some reason the loco was running bunker first, such positioning would be out, but for normal running conditions it makes sense if only tank locos used that line.

 

Do not know about other areas but for the North East the NERA have published a booklet on "Servicing the North Eastern Railway's Locomotives"
This covers provision of Turntables, Coal stages and more relevant Water Softening, Water Troughs, Water Pumping Stations, Water tanks and Water columns.
It goes into quite a bit of detail about sizes and locations etc.

Do not know if it is still available.

ISBN 9 781873 513620
Published by NERA 2007 Edited by John Teasdale.
http://www.ner.org.uk/

 

Well, the 'Brighton was certainly a line that made extensive use of tank engines, including for mainline services, and generally they were if possible turned at each end of their journeys.

Tom