Improved Watering Equipment.

The locomotives hauling the principal expresses between London and Liverpool, like those in most of the long-distance services at Home, pick up water en route by means of track troughs. As the result of an improve- page 55 ment introduced in the pick-up apparatus on its locomotives, the L.M. & S. Company is saving no less than 3,675,000 gallons of water every day. The device consists of a deflector-plate in front of the pick-up scoop which, by directing the water from the sides of the trough towards the centre, causes an artificial increase in the height of the water in the region of the scoop mouthpiece, and so increases by 200 gallons the amount it is possible to pick up at each lift.

Including water used for washing-out boilers, the L.M. & S. uses no less than 9,600 million gallons of water every year. In an appeal to locomotive men to conserve supplies, the Company points out that if every engineman were to save five gallons of water a day when filling locomotive tanks at the depots, the annual saving would be nearly £3,000.