Watering Engines en route.

One of the most useful devices ever invented for railway use was the water pick-up gear for locomotives, enabling engines to pick up water for boiler use while travelling at speed. This apparatus was invented in 1857 by John Rams-bottom, then locomotive engineer on the London and North Western Railway. It gave railways the power to operate really long non-stop runs, and obviated the provision of tenders with very large capacity tanks, involving haulage of much dead weight and an increase in locomotive building costs. To-day almost all the main-line engines of the Home railways are equipped with the apparatus, and as an example of present-day working it may be stated that the “Royal Scot” locomotives, hauling the heaviest Anglo-Scottish passenger trains between London and Carlisle, have a water capacity of only 3,500 gallons, water being picked up en route from nine track troughs spaced about thirty miles apart.