Steel Water Tank Question

[NW Mailing List]

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)
> 
> <PastedGraphic-3.png>
> 
> <PastedGraphic-1.png>

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