Steam locomotive tenders
It’s easy to forget that most steam locomotive designs are usually in two major parts; the locomotive itself and its tender dutifully hauling fuel and water. Take away one, and the other is useless.
It seems reasonable to assume that a steam engine and its tender served together from the time they left the builder until they met the scrapper’s torch.
Well, it ain’t necessarily so. While there are many cases where the original tender stayed with its locomotive its entire working career, a goodly number were swapped around as work requirements and overall condition dictated. During their operating years it was common, for example, to replace an original, smaller tender with a larger one from a retired sister.
Serviceable tenders of all sizes and shapes also wound up behind steam powered pile drivers, as water cars in arid areas, and attached to freight diesels pressed into passenger service to supply water for passengers. Still others found themselves converted to fire train service or rebuilt into snowplows.
Depending on the railroad, the extra water bottles, for lack of a better alternate term for them, were either preserved as they were serving behind a steam engine or modified with additional fittings to allow crews easy access. Some were renumbered into a Maintenance of Way series and even painted in MofW colors.
Whatever new service the tenders were assigned to, the majority had their fuel bunkers, whether it be coal or oil, sealed off as the cost of cleaning and decontaminating them were usually considered too expensive.
In 2023 the ranks of remaining steam engine tenders are thinning out as they deteriorate but here and there, tucked into the backwaters of major terminals, it is still possible to spot one just waiting to be called to duty just one more time.
