Steel Water Tank Question

Tue May 27 11:46:50 EDT 2025

What color did the NW paint their wooden and steel water tanks?

Carl Barna
Emmaus, PA
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From: NW-Mailing-List <nw-mailing-list-bounces at nwhs.org> on behalf of NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2025 10:10 PM
To: NW Mailing List <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Subject: Re: Steel Water Tank Question

The water tower in Clare Yards in Cincinnati was an open top. I have photo rom above, so don't forget to model the dead birds floating on top. [X]
Stephen Rineair

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From: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
To: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Cc: "NW Mailing List" <nw-mailing-list at nwhs.org>
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2025 7:20:46 PM
Subject: Re: Steel Water Tank Question

As a follow up, an answer to my question was hinted at in the instructions to a water tank kit produced by Tichy. A short paragraph stated that some railroads “in temperate climates” didn’t install tops to their tanks. So that at least confirmed that petticoat junction-style open top steel tanks were a real thing.
Today I also found the standard plans for the tanks in question in my original email, which confirmed the open top for the specific tanks I asked about:
https://www.nwhs.org/archivesdb/detail.php?ID=13303

The “why” question is still an open one. Possibly as simple as reducing costs, and maybe soot wasn’t an issue.

Matt Goodman
Columbus, Ohio, US

On May 23, 2025, at 7:12 PM, Matt Goodman <mgoodman312 at icloud.com> wrote:

Hey everyone,
This past couple weeks I’ve been exploring the ODOT (Ohio Department of Transportation) Aerial Image Archive (here: https://gis3.dot.state.oh.us/ODOTAerialArchive/).

The first place I looked was the Dorney coaling station south of Columbus. The high water tank (the “raw” or untreated water) was open on top (as expected) but I was surprised to see that the two low 200K treated / storage tanks also appeared to be open. That surprised me, so I started down to check other locations.

The nearest location with a similar set up is Portsmouth, and it too shows open tops on the treated tanks.

To me this is unintuitive since the treated water would be exposed to soot - especially in the Portsmouth yard - which would then make its way through the locomotive appliances, etc.

Does anyone have any comments on why this was done? Rain water harvesting? Maybe soot / cinder doesn’t really cause problems?

Attached are Dorney (top -1959) and Portsmouth (bottom - 1954)

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